Avenging the World
by Zero9grl
Summary: Five years after the defeat of Necron, the group who saved the world find their lives coming undone around them. The pangs of loss begin to marr everyday. Can they keep it together or will the eternal darkness take them all?
1. Trial of Vivi

Note: All characters, places, ect. belong to Square Enix.

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**Avenging the World**

By Zero9grl

Back then it was so easy to pick up the pieces and restart life from where it had left. We were so strong and so brave. We could do anything. We faced down the past and the eternal darkness. The only thing impossible was getting through a date with Dagger. Where did all that go? When did we loose what made this so easy? How can we just pick up the pieces this time? What happened to the group who saved the world?

_The Darkness in His Soul Trial of Vivi_

How long has it been? Five years?

I remember watching that play, _I Want to Be Your Canary_, with all my friends and family around me. The children so excited to see their first performance. It was bright and sunny, with doves flying overhead. And when Zidane revealed himself, Dagger came running outside, just like a princess in a fairytale…

I see that play every year now, with my children. It's their favorite. I remember the first time I saw that play and how it was the beginning I guess. The answer to my question wouldn't have been known if it weren't for that play… I never would have started down that journey to the truth where I met and lost so many people…

It's snowing in Alexandria now, but still I stand in line at the ticket booth to buy seats for my children and myself. We see this play every year. And every year as I sit in those wooden seats watching someone else's life on stage I wonder, how many gone, how many less will there be when I return? One year, two years, three years, five years… Each passing year takes away my friends until I'm the only black mage who remembers Dali, Lindblum, Kuja, the crimes and victories of the past.

It shouldn't be this way. How can life be so cruel? The planet feeds off my pain, sucking it from my skin like juice from an apple before taking one more bite. Is this what it means to live? To slowly shrivel away inside your skin as you watch your world die off, one loved one at a time, until one day, all that's left is a bitter husk?

Some day only memories and hats on sticks will be left. Until the memories fade away into stories, the stories into dreams and finally into nothing as these hats I remember so well fray and fall apart, become tattered and torn, spiders spinning webs in them and crows using them for perches, no one caring about the souls who are buried beneath, the bodies, beautiful perversions of life made from spirits and mist, empty now of the faces who used to smile so charmingly.

I want to rage at the world each day the sun rises and the birds sing. _Why me? Why must I see them all pass from me, one by one, their fading eyes etched in my sight until I see them everywhere! Is this our punishment? For being created? Are we murderers by existence, that life must be so short and fleeting? What have they ever done, but be good and kind and loving?_

I can not let the children see these thoughts in the darkness of my face. Their lives will be short enough without sharing the aches that run fissures up and down my heart. Sometimes I wonder what they suspect when I see their faces hiding around corners, gazing at me so strangely after I've broken a window in my anger. Do they think their father is a foolish mage, silly enough to fall for the tricks of the world, the illusion that life is splendid and wonderful and something to be cherished?

What do these children of mine who dance in the sun and splash in ponds, so carefree and real that the forest seems fake in comparison, what do they think when their friends fathers slip away quietly in the afternoon over work, never giving warning that the end is near? What will they think when I finally stop and they're left to the Genomes who outlive us all? What will my children think of this hateful world when they are grown to travel it themselves?

Will I live long enough to know?

It's these thoughts inside me that lacerate me from within. Thick, boiling bile wells up from these cuts in a burning fire, choking me, stealing away my air and contorting my heart as my head spins round and round.

"How many?" The wolf-man at the counter is asking and I'm drawn out of my small center of rage and pain to the cheery world outside where little girls jump rope and friends play tag as men buy flowers for blushing ladies and fighting men brag about their exploits to each other over heady beer, the nearby women soldiers rolling their eyes at every exaggeration. I have six children I love so dearly waiting for me at Black Mage Village who love to see this play every year. "Seven please," I tell him, counting out the money from my pocket and he gives me seven strips of paper that mean all the joy there is to six little boys who look just like me. I check them over, always mindful of the ticket I brought after Grandpa's death that was a fake, but no, none of these reads _I Want to Be Your Crow_, not this time. "Thank you and enjoy the play," the wolf-man behind the counter is saying as I wander off into the crowd and the line moves up a step, one more closer to its end.

There's no more time for thinking. The world is flashing by. I have these tickets and the children are waiting, excitement in their steps. I can see their faces, glowing in the darkness. Again and again, every year until the planet devours me and I stop in their arms, we'll watch this play and there will be laughter as they repeat the lines we all know so well. My children who innocently enjoy the many things life has to offer. The things I never knew existed until that journey five years ago.

The tickets are clenched in my hand as I run up the forest paths now. Trees sigh behind and owls call. _It's so late, the darkness has descended now! What are you still doing out, tiny mage? Reveling in the blackness that spawned you?_ The forest always whispers to me as I climb over fallen logs, rotting from within, and weave my way through hidden bushes, leaving the long path behind in favor of the directness of the open woods. _Better hurry…You'll be late…_the crickets are singing and I increase my pace.

I wonder if they're awake still, sitting up in bed after Mikoto's put them to sleep for the night, wondering what their father's brought them back from the city this time. I barely notice the mist snaking along the forest floor, flying away as my feet pound the ground. An acrid smell begins to assault me, but it means nothing. Just beyond those trees now, my home, waiting in my mind's eye like a picture I've left momentarily.

There! In the darkness! Lights! I give it all in a last run, my breath coming so heavily it's sure to wake them all, but I don't care. I have a home, no matter how constantly death hovers over it, and I know they'll all be worried about me. I want to give a small cheer as I race past the trees which block my view. _I'm back!_

And then I fall. My heart is finally breaking now. The village is in flames. It wasn't the friendly lights of lamps I saw; it was the flickers of fire, tearing down my straw and wood village.

"Bibi, Riri, Nini!" I'm screaming and no one's answering. I've seen such destruction and worse before. I know this fire has been going for hours. That won't stop me though, it can't stop me.

"Kiki, Zizi, Sisi!" I call out the names Eiko gave them five years ago, trying not to choke on the smoke. They have to hear me! They must hear me! My glove is burning now as I wade into the flames; I tear it off and throw it to the fire. My children! My friends! The black mages still unhatched! Did any make it out?

"Bibi! Zizi!" I scream as I shove the door of my house open. I can't enter. The room has already been devoured. The roof is groaning, beginning to cave in. I cough and run to the stable, my eyes tearing. Maybe my sons are rescuing Bobby Corwen! The stable has been reduced to a pile of blackened wood. In front of the building is a burning pile of clothes. It only takes a glance to know the mage is dead.

Where are they? Where? I charge throughout the village, stripping clothing piece by piece as it begins to flame. Ice spells are no protection here as I burst through doors and up stairs. I look everywhere, but all I see are ashing clothes. There is no life in this village and I'm running out of strength. If I stay any longer I will be consumed too, but my sons, I can't find them!

"Where are you?" I'm screaming and the world is spinning. I can't take it. The heat and smoke rasp my throat, cloud my eyes. The flames eagerly lick at my unprotected skin and the tickets are curling to ash in my hand. I have to save them! I can't give up! I won't let them die. The world won't take them from me like it took so many others!

I want to call their names again, but instead a scream tears itself from my throat as I collapse. The bile inside me is pouring forth and the flames back away as convulsions seize me. "**_Where are they? My children!_**" I'm howling now in a voice not my own as I change. My back splits open as the wings come and my hands crack as the fingers grow and become clawed. I'm elongating under the pain as I crawl across the room, nails tearing at wood. Black blood is dribbling down my arms and I can feel it trickling down my back as feathers belonging to a crow singe and dry, tacky with my life essence.

Then the wings are flapping and I'm rising as the ceiling of Mr. 192's shop falls around me. My vision is going blank as I rise into the sky, my skin throbbing painfully, blood oozing to hiss in the fire down below. All that's left of this home is a painful shell. They're dead. Every one of them is gone. I can feel it in what's left of my heart before it turns to dust under the crushing pressure of this rage inside me. Tears are streaming down my face, the last ones I'll ever cry as I watch the place that was my home turn into ashes.

I've mutated into something beyond tears now. Feeling my clawed hands and dirty wings, I remember the angry Black Waltzes. I'd felt sorry for them in my naïve way, but now I understand. Their rage is my own and for this I've become a monster, but I no longer care. My children's bodies are burning away below and my heart with them.

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A broken heart, a shattered soul. Vivi watches the ruins of his beloved village smolder and he knows the time of innocence is long past. There are questions to be answered now and someone must seek these things. What exactly did happen in Black Mage Village? Next: _Case of Mikoto--Dying Treasure._


	2. Case of Mikoto

Note: All characters, places, ect. belong to Square Enix.

Also, I'll try to keep Wensday as a regular update day for this (I know it's kind of late on Wensday for this update, but hopefully the next one will be much earlier), unless I get ahead of myself (which is unlikely, but if I do), in which I'll update earlier. And thanks for the reviews!

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_Case of Mikoto--Dying Treasure_

_My throat is constricting and I'm crying the first tears I think I ever cried. I'm breaking down inside. I just want to kneel down in the flames and give up. I can't win. One way or another I'm going to die and the fear of it, ending without fulfilling some purpose, is driving me crazy so that I'm biting through my lower lip trying not to howl like a dying animal._

_There's blood in my mouth, I can taste it, tangy and sweet, metallic. This is it, this is the end. The universe is out to get me. I can't live. I should just lie down and cry until the flames have eaten me alive and leave only a charred skeleton behind if I'm lucky. I'm worthless to this world anyways. Why fight the inevitable?_

_But no, hands are tugging on me and little faces sob into my skirt. I can hear the screams all around and see the shadows running like bugs that have been found by a vindictive child. Some of them are clustering around me, hands reaching out to grab me._ Help us! What do we do? Save us!

_I can't give up and die, no matter how much I feel it is what will be. They need my help. I have to swallow this fear that is making me shake and my stomach cramp. I try. I really do. But all that goes down is blood and spit and ash. Hands are grabbing me, tugging on me. Telling me to do something. What do I do?_

_I shake them off and yell for quite. I need to think. Just…if they'd give me a moment! But I don't have a moment. In desperation, I ask myself, what would Zidane do and I remember back on Terra when he led us all to safety, to Gaia, away from our burning home world. Then I had been helpless too, but I had been so calm, as if I had foreseen it all and decided that maybe I'd stick it out to the end, just for kicks. I'm not calm now though. I'm on the verge of panic._

Think Mikoto, think!

_I gather them to me; these scared Black Mages and Genomes. "Start heading out of the forest. Pick up anyone who's still alive that you see. You four check the buildings for anyone who's trapped. Load the eggs in a cart and have Bobby Corwen pull them. Move!" I'm shouting now and I don't know where these orders are coming from, but they sound logical. I start shoving people to their tasks. Some run to check the buildings like I say; others to fetch Bobby Corwen and a cart for the eggs from which new black mages are born. The rest of these scared creatures I hardly recognize in their panic start heading towards the distant ocean, running as fast as I can make them to get away from the forest._

_Black Mage Village is burning down to the ground around me and I, in some stupid thought of heroically buying time, advance towards the culprit who started this all. He is easy enough to find: I just have to look for the worst fires which are in the center of the village. I think my knees are about to give out as I move to jump the figure who wears black mage clothing, but is not one of those I know so well._

_Then he turns and I drop in mid-leap; horror is clawing its way up my spine._

_He doesn't greet me, but those eyes, that face…_

"_You're running out of time," he tells me coldly in a small voice and I hear screams as he sets a fleeing mage on fire. "Soon they'll all be dead…"_

Cold hands shake my shoulders and I sit up with a stuttering gasp as if taking a first breath after nearly drowning. I realize my face is wet and sticky with tears and sea salt and I try to brush it away with one hand, the other twining around the little mage who woke me and pulling him close. It's afternoon and that was last night. The soot is still in my hair and the dried fear sweat doesn't make me smell like roses, but I don't think Bibi cares.

Around us the other Black Mages and Genomes who were able to flee are already up and huddling together or alone depending on their temperaments, making it obvious that I'm the last to awake. They stare at me with that look again, the one that says, _Help us! What do we do?_

Looking back at these ragged survivors with burnt hats and coats, missing gloves or shoes or in some cases tunics, I count them up and there are too few, only thirty or so including the eggs. I know each one by name as they know me and the absence of so many makes the tears start again.

The ocean waves roar behind my back; our escape to the sea has been completed, but it doesn't fill me with joy. For a village of over a hundred to be reduced to so few in only a night… I can already see that of Vivi's children, Sisi and Kiki didn't manage to escape. He'll be heartbroken. And my own friend, a genome who is sister in all, but name, is also absent. I will never be able to talk to her again and another wound opens to weep in my heart.

I think to myself, maybe some escaped that didn't come with us, but I know it's doubtful. We barely escaped ourselves. Yet hope likes to tease us. I thought Garland beat hope out of me long ago, but maybe not.

I take a breath and plunge back into the pool of fear and despair that is the waking world. "We need to leave in case he tries to track us down. We can't live on the seashore forever. Let's head for the Dwarves home. We'll have to take the long way around, but that's better than starving or being turned into dust. We'll leave in five minutes after we take care of the injured," I tell them quickly and stand up, removing Bibi's grimy hands from me so I can use the small cure magic I know on others.

There is none without a wound. I even have some, though I don't remember ever getting the burns which stripe the insides of my arms or the cut on my shoulder that stings every time the cloth of my tunic touches it. There are some who are clearly beyond help and others who passed away in the night; we send them into the sea, as much of a burial as we can afford for the moment. Everyone wants to cry I think, but we're running out of tears. We're dehydrated and hungry and this part of the shore is rocky and barren. There is nothing here, no matter how much we wish there were.

"Are you alright Mr. 288?" I ask the mage who is the friend of my heart and has taught me Gaian ways. He's bent over double as if in pain, but I don't see any wounds or burns hidden among his rags.

His eyes light up in a way I have come to recognize among the black mages as happy; he is glad that I have asked about him. I understand that, but I don't know how to react to it, so I look away. Before I came to Gaia…if I asked questions about a person, there would only be hard words and painful smacks as an answer. I don't ask many questions anymore. Mr. 288 seems to enjoy it when people asked him questions though. Now he takes my hand and places it on his chest where I can feel the rasp growing inside. It's obvious to both of us what this is and what it means.

"You can ride in the cart with the eggs," I tell him softly, not wanting the others to hear. To them Mr. 288 is everything. To me he's everything. Mr. 288 always knows the words to be said. When I begin to hate this purposeless life of mine, it's always him who shows me that there is still some purpose to what I do. I need him.

He's shaking his head no though and croaks so quietly I almost don't hear him, "I'll keep up somehow. Just don't tell…they'll worry." Small coughs take him and I help him up. For the first time I'm angry at my healing skills, the only spells I know being basic. I can't cure his longs of all the smoke he's breathed in. It's obviously hard for him to breath. I have to face it: he may die.

After tending to everyone as well as I can, we set out at a slow pace, more of a crawl than the fast speed I feel we need to deter following, but the best everyone can manage. Bibi flits in and out of this crowd, searching for his brothers and friends. Every five minutes he returns to hold my hand dejectedly.

He makes me think of last night. He makes me think of Vivi. My stomach is curdling at the thought and I feel like throwing up. Vivi. I told him I'd watch his sons while he went to get their tickets this year. Now I only have one. My hand tightens around Bibi's, stopping him from running off again. What will I tell this young mage's father? What can you tell a parent who's lost several children in one night?

I don't know and I feel a little sicker. There's a hole inside me from the dead and lost; I love these little boys who I baby-sit whenever Vivi leaves them behind. I've put them to bed and told them stories, fed them my cooking and washed their dirty clothes. Sometimes I feel like their big sister. If there's an empty place inside me for them, what will there be inside Vivi who waited for their eggs to hatch and spent the hours of everyday with all of them. How can I tell him I only have one?

Mr. 288 coughs next to me and begins to falter. I grab him before he drops and hold him up. "You have to make it," I'm whispering in his ear as the group slows down even more to match me. "They need you, I need you. Just a few days walk."

He seems out of it. His eyes aren't following my face. Instead he stares off into the distance as if into something great and tiring I can't see. He nods though and we continue on, hand in hand, Bibi in one and Mr. 288 in the other. The sun is nearing setting, but we have to make as much time as we can.

"_And then the Prince and the Princess went home to the castle to live happily ever after." I'm yawning, it's so late. I think it's something like eleven. I like to go to bed by nine. I'm sitting in a chair in Vivi's house that is too small and has my knees bending to my chest, watching over six little mages who should really be sleeping._

"_And then what happened?" Nini is demanding, still wide awake. They all lean forward expectantly, knowing I'm nearing the end, that I can't take much more of this bedtime story stuff. The parts I tell then are their favorites. The parts I tell then are the ones Vivi says I shouldn't, but when I'm so tired and they won't stop whining for more, I just can't seem to care._

"_And then, a giant, man-eating worm with big bloody fangs colored red by his past meals and spit dripping from his mouth barged into the castle to assassinate the Prince and Princess and there was a tonberry there with a big rusty knife and a cactuar with sharp, pointy spikes and everyone said 'Oh no! We're doomed!' and the Prince said, 'Where the hell is my magical sword?" and the Princess said, 'I know you've been cheating on me with the scullery maid! I wish I never married you!' and the Minister said, 'Good because I've had the hots for you Princess since before you met this bumpkin. Would you care to elope with me?' and the man-eating worm said, 'I'm here to eat everyone, so shut the hell up and let me get on with it!' And then everyone got eaten," I tell them and they giggle to each other because I said hell and they know that's a bad word that gets your mouth washed out with soap._

"_And then what happened," Nini orders and I'm falling asleep after a long day's work towards correcting the black mages short lifespan so I mutter, "And then the Prince realized his magic sword was actually being used to prop the table up so he grabbed it as the worm ate him and then cut his way out with it, freeing everyone and the worm said, 'So I am vanquished' and perished and everyone celebrated for many days and nights."_

"_And then?"_

"_And then they all got really fat and had to go on diets and the Princess was upset because she couldn't fit into any of her dresses anymore." My eyes are closing and I know I'm mumbling now._

"_And then?"_

"_And then the Minister revealed his new exercise program, certain to make you…"_

_Suddenly the house is on fire and the children are gone from their beds and I'm standing alone in a collapsing room screaming their names. What's going on? Did I knock over the candle? Did one of the children have a nightmare again?_

_I rush outside and I can see now that the whole village is burning. The inn, the shop, the stable; they're all in flames. Even my own house where all my hard work is stored and chronicled is blazing like a signal to the sky and I can see my papers turning to ash through the window. I'm choking up as I look around and I think I'm crying, but no, I never cry. Not when Garland beat me, not when Kuja locked me in the laboratory, not when Zidane left me. I don't cry. But I am and I feel like this was the inevitable because I should have died on Terra five years ago. I think I'm whimpering, but the fire is so loud I can't tell. There are shrieks and I can see my friends burning around me and I'm so helpless—_

I open my eyes and I realize I've ripped the covers of the tiny bed I'm in, having bitten on the fabric to keep from screaming. It's dark now, though the light of early morning is beginning to shine through the shutters. I'm in a guest room at Conde Petie where we arrived last night.

I stare at the ceiling and force myself to think of that night three days ago. I'd fallen asleep telling bedtime stories to the children. I only woke up when a ball of fire crashed through the window and the room had begun to burn. The children had still been in bed, I remember. I'd rushed them outside as they sleepily pulled on coats and hats.

Outside hadn't been any better. That's when I started to loose it. How are you supposed to react when you wake up to a burning village? That's my defense, but it sounds pretty weak. I was originally created to takeover planets and I can't handle a fire?

"How Terra's angels have fallen," I laugh softly to myself, more hurt than amused. I close my eyes again as I remember the worst part. After we'd all gotten away to the seashore, I was getting pretty hysterical. I remember screaming something like, "I thought there was a place for us! Was it just a lie? We're not part of nature's plan, so we have to die!" And then I think I threw some rocks at the sky. I'm laughing now and crying a little bit. Some leader I am. I get some of us out alive and then I throw a temper tantrum and at who? At the sky!

Now I'm really crying though and I think I'm ready to bawl. They're all gone! All of them! The Genomes and Black Mages I saw everyday, still see in my mind, only thirty of them are alive! "Only thirty!" I scream and throw my pillow across the room, angry with it all.

"Only thirty?" Someone inquires and I realize belatedly that I have a guest. I look up and for a moment the words escape me. I recognize him immediately, but I haven't seen him in years. "How…" I begin, but he tosses his head with that indifferent way of his, as if it doesn't matter so I don't continue.

He doesn't enter, but then again, he never did come into any room I slept in. It was his own chivalrous little quirk. Looking at him now I see something I thought I'd never see; I think he's actually concerned and that just makes me cry again. How can he be here and how can he care?

"What happened?" He's asking as if I weren't putting on the most personal display in front of him, embarrassing myself by being so openly emotional.

I take a deep breath and try to calm down. He has to know what happened. It would be unlike him if he didn't already. That night comes up again and suddenly I remember that face (_You're running out of time_) and I'm whispering to him, half unbelieving myself, "I know him."

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The village burnt and the survivors lost, Mikoto has to wonder how Zidane ever managed to be so strong. That face though is so familiar, who is it? What does it mean? And how do the other heroes fare? Next: _Reclaiming the Dead Jewel--Regret of Eiko._


	3. Regret of Eiko

Note: All characters, places, ect. belong to Square Enix.

A day late (I'm trying)... For people who never paid much attention (or maybe just don't remember) to the Eidolon Wall in Madain Sari, aside from the letters from Eiko's parents to her and the letter from Garnet's father to her and her mother, the wall also had notes on the history of the summoner tribe and theories on how Eidolons came to be (this isn't really relevant, but just to clarify that it was more than a wall with pretty pictures).

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_Reclaiming the Dead Jewel--Regret of Eiko_

"Miss—"

"Young lady—"

"Eiko Fabool Carol!"

I'm in so much trouble and I know it, which is why I'm running as fast as I can, hiking up these stupid skirts and leaping over the railing to the landing below. Mom's coming up fast behind me; I can hear her shoes clicking that quick tempo on the carpet. She's much more agile than she's looks, especially for someone wearing a dress like that. I duck on instinct and the hand that was shooting forward to grab my ear just misses.

"Eiko, what are you—," Dad asks as I run through the airship dock and down the stairs to the air cab station. I don't have time to answer, so I try to give a little wave as I skid around the corner and through the doors. I can hear him saying, "Hilda, what is—," but Mom just tells him not now and thumps down the stairs after me.

"Quick! Quick! To the theater district," I tell the attendant before I'm even close enough to step into the cab. He knows me well by now though and already starts it up to go. I dive through the open door just as it begins to leave and loose one of my fancy new shoes in the process. I feel a little bad about that—it's such a pretty shoe—but what's more important is looking out the window to see Mom waving her arms behind me, shouting punishments I can't hear.

I recline on the empty bench with a sigh and stare at the ceiling. This all means bad things for me later, I know, but right now I'm free and I think I've got a bit of wanderlust. The cab picks up speed and rattles down its track, passing blurs that are the many sections of Lindblum. Maybe I'll spend the day at Tantalus's hideout and make Marcus tell me stories about the many jobs he's pulled. But no, they're out of town right now; only Bunce and Lucella will be there and I don't want to talk to them right now. I'm a sophisticated lady and they're just little kids who follow Tantalus around. Besides, Bunce put dirt in my hair last week and I'm still mad about that, even if I did get back at him by having Fenrir chase him around town.

I roll over and sigh. There's nothing fun to do today. I could visit Grandma Pickles, but I know she's busy. Moodon, the moogle at the inn in the Business District went to visit his aunt. Gon the Card freak is in Treno for a card tournament. Alice the item shopkeeper left to restock her store. All my friends are either busy or out of town.

I sigh again and roll onto my other side. I'm eleven years old and I have nothing to do. Mom says that can only mean trouble and gives me lots of chores. Right now she's probably thinking of all the privies she's going to make me scrub when I get back. I'm supposed to be having lessons in diplomacy today from noon to three, but it's so _boring_. I tell my teacher that it shouldn't matter how deeply you curtsy to someone depending on their class, a curtsy is a curtsy. My teacher tells my Mom who tells me only tavern wenches don't know the appropriate curtsy for every situation and I'm writing up a five hundred word letter of apology with the quills nobility scribble with and the whole time I'm afraid I'm going to break it, it's so fragile.

Now I'm hiking up my skirts and scratching where my itchy slip has been rubbing my legs all day. It's so unladylike I even feel a little bad about it, but I'm just tired of being a lady today. I don't remember Garnet saying anything about learning all this when we traveled together and I wish she could have at least warned me, though I probably wouldn't have listened.

The air cab comes to a halt and I topple off the bench into a heap on the floor. The attendant opens the door and it's that new boy I know has a crush on me. He's blushing and the door closes again and I realize that my drawers are showing too late. Now I want to smack something because how embarrassing is that? Ladies don't fall in undignified positions on air cab floors. They always swoon in graceful heaps and then some handsome man like Zidane catches them before they can so much as ruin their perfectly bouncy hair.

That's another thing. My hair isn't bouncy, it isn't even long. I can't get it to grow past my shoulders and then every morning it's full of knots so that I just end up cutting it all off. Now I'm fuming as I think over all the unladylike things about me and I have enough to take up both hands and all my toes.

"Ahem, Lady Eiko, m-may I open the d-door now?" The attendant asks and it makes me think of Vivi and his own stuttering. I quickly stand up and arrange myself appropriately, telling him he may do so in the most grown-up voice I can muster.

I walk out onto the station platform and then I remember I'm missing a shoe. Too late, my foot's already found something nasty some jerk's left on the ground. I think it's a bit of rotting cabbage, but I don't want to lift up my skirts and see. I try to scrape it off without anybody noticing, though I'm sure I'm turning a little green because it feels so nasty on my skin, now soft and sensitive after all these years in Lindblum.

Outside I kind of just wander down the street, looking in windows, watching people go by and generally just sulking. I'm eleven years old, I've saved the world, can summon legendary beasts the likes of which most people can hardly dream, will someday be the Regent of a whole country if I don't mess anything up too badly and I have nothing to do. Nothing that matters anyways.

I realize I've come to a dead end that I recognize as the alley I feed the kitty I'm not allowed to keep because Dad's allergic to cats. It's pretty dingy and people stack their trash here, but there's a wooden crate someone's left that I keep clean. I sit on it and soon a tabby slithers out of the shadows to rub against my shins. "Hey Koko," I say and pick him up, rubbing my face against his cheek. He purrs and I can tell he's glad to see me.

Petting his little, vibrating body makes me relax and before I know it I'm telling him everything I've been wanting to tell my parents for weeks, but haven't found the courage to. I tell him how I hate being cooped up in a big castle where sometimes I only see the sky at a glance all day and he licks my hand reassuringly. I complain that the last time I saw all my friends was Garnet's birthday and he curls up on my lap. I confide that I miss the moogles who raised me and he meows in sympathy.

"I should go visit everyone… Morrison, Mommatose, Chimomo… I always feel so guilty when I leave though. It's kind of like I'm turning my back on them; that I only came over to play for a day, but that's it. What do you think Koko?" I ask, but he doesn't reply because there's a big juicy rat in the corner and he has better things to do than listen to me now.

"You're so rude!" I snap and push him off my lap. I don't really mean it, but I feel so irritable! He runs off after the rat who has already disappeared into the shadows and I'm all alone again. "Oh forget it!" I shout and stomp off. I'm getting angry, but I'm not really sure at what. I just need to go somewhere! Well, damn it, I'll just leave for the day! It's not like anybody here really needs me right now anyways! I kick the crate over as I leave and it makes me feel a little better.

_Grandpa, why is my name on the Eidolon Wall?_

_Because you're a naughty little girl who doesn't eat her Grandpa's food and the Eidolons are making sure they remember that later._

_Grandpa…you're a jerk._

There's a very familiar pile of rubble around me and it makes me so happy that I hug a precariously tilted pillar. Nobody's looking anyways.

I'm back in Madain Sari after stealing away on several ships and walking for a week. Mom and Dad are probably a little worried about me, but right now I don't really care. I'm an adult; I can take care of myself and do what I want and right now I just want to be home in Madain Sari.

"Lady Eiko!" A moogle shouts and I find Chimomo dancing around my legs. When did she get so small? We used to be the same height. Now I'm twice her size and it scares me a little to realize how much things have changed. I'm really not the little girl who played with moogles anymore, am I?

Now the other moogles are gathering around and I have to greet them all. I remember every one and I can't help, but smile. They're all asking me questions and I'm hard put to answer them all. What have I been doing? Am I princess now? How did I get so tall? Did I have a good trip? Did I bring any friends? What would I like for dinner?

It takes a while for all of us to calm down, we're so excited. I haven't been to Madain Sari in over a year and now I remember why I love this place so much. I play a little hide-and-seek with the younger moogles to pass the day, filling this crumbling village with shrieking laughter. I like to imagine that's how it was before its destruction, when my parents were still alive. Sometimes I think I can see whole buildings and happy summoners as we race through the village, but it's always my imagination.

It's my turn to hide now and I'm trying to silence my giggles as I sneak into the Eidolon Wall. I know the best hiding place where they'll never find—

"My wall! My wall!"

It's becoming a little hard to breath and I think I'm on the verge of fainting, though I've never done so before. The wall! My wall! It's—it's—it's dying! The paint has all, but faded away and the carvings are vanishing. The notes—the letters from my parents—left by countless ancestors are barely legible!

How is this happening? My wall can't just—just—degrade into a piece of useless rock!

Why did nobody tell me?

When did the Eidolon Wall start to fade?

How could I have not noticed before?

"Stop it! Stop disappearing! Come back!" I'm screaming at my beloved wall and beating my fists against it now. I prayed here everyday. I used to trace the carvings with my fingers until I drew them in my sleep. I read the theories here religiously! When Grandpa died, I cried all night at its feet! Whenever I felt the sting of being the last summoner in a dead village, this is where I went for comfort! This Wall is practically my heart! It can't leave me!

"This paint doesn't fade! These lines don't wear away! This isn't an ordinary wall! Stop—stop dying damn it!"

The wind's been picking up and now it's whipping my clothes and hair every which way, forcing me to stumble in its wake as it nudges me here and there. There's a white light that's building and blinding me through my tears. A roar of voices is surrounding me and I beat back against them with my own fury. Madain Sari is my home! It's not allowed to change!

Not once in the six years I lived here did this wall ever fade, ever crumble, give way to time like the rest of Madain Sari. The Eidolon Wall has always been indomitable, able to withstand any test of nature. The colors always shone as if they had been recently applied and every groove and line was as precise as if it had just been cut. Now I can hardly pick them out and bare, pointless rock is staring me in the face.

The white light is eating my alive and I flail back at it with horn and teeth and nails. I'm burning as it devours me from the inside out, but I don't stop screaming for the Eidolon Wall. Soon I find I'm no longer screaming any words, but giving voice to a mindless wail of pain and anger. My wall! My home! My parents! My past! In my absence it's been slowly dying and now it's all, but rotted! I abandoned it for the world and now it's crumbling around me!

It's true. I can hear the wall groaning, feel it crashing down. The pillars are breaking, dropping one by one at my feet. This village is finally dead and I'm the murderer. I left it to breath its last on its own, never gave it another thought as I walked away down the dusty road with Zidane.

Mist is rising, swallowing me in its milky depths. I think I hear someone calling, but there are so many voices now, all shouting, and my own screams. All I can think is I've killed it. The one place I love most I've let sink away into nothing. I want to fight for it, to reclaim it, but the dead can't be revived.

I'm falling away into bitter nothingness.

* * *

An ignored past and forgotten village, Eiko understands regret at her young age better than most. How can she fight a battle already lost? Is there no way to reclaim what's gone? If Eidolons are born out of legends and legends are born out of people, can this young legend's Eidolon soothe the past? Next: _Case of Madeen--Numbing Ties_. 


	4. Case of Madeen

Note: All characters, places, ect. belong to Square Enix.

And now a day early! I hope this isn't too confusing (I had a couple of friends look it over and they said it wasn't, but you never know).

* * *

_Case of Madeen--Numbing Ties_

Sometimes I think of what it was like before and I find myself dipping in day dreams.

When my name was Mog and I stood only three feet high.

I can feel the sun and wind of Madain Sari just thinking about it. The salty sea smell and sounds of waves…

Eidolons don't roam the open world. We sit in our summoner's heart, lulled by their beating life into a symbiotic contentment.

Over the years the days when I freely wandered the world become a distant memory and soon there was never anything before this time and all sense of self drifts away until there is no me, only her and I am her as she is me. No us, or we, only Eiko.

The things that make her laugh make me laugh and the things that make her cry make me cry. Everything she feels, I feel and everything she cherishes in her heart surrounds me always so that I may cherish it too. There is no Mog in this heart, no small moogle who hides in clothes and shies at meeting new people.

There is only Madeen and Fenrir, Phoenix and Carbuncle. Together we make up one heart and this one heart makes up a small girl.

_Eiko…_

The days begin to run, one into another, and awareness comes and goes. She never calls anymore. Before, in that time before now, so distant and fleeting from memory, she called so many times. I fought the many battles and soothed the many bumps of life. Before there was a small girl and her Eidolons; now there is only a girl, a different girl, and a heavy silence since her calls ceased long ago.

No more words or summons, conversations or questions. This silence crushes away an Eidolon, one by one, until there never were any Eidolons, only this one heart. Everything beings to meld together and I forget why I'm here, that I was ever anywhere else. I forget that I exist and all there is is that heavy silence, weighing in on all sides.

I'd begun to loose all sense of life… It was like a waking death… All my senses are numb and I can barely feel that beat of life anymore. Only a dimming memory reminds me I'm part of something; that I'm not a bit of nothing floating in a world of nothing. I think I was ready to surrender myself to the silence entirely, to be a forgotten existence for the rest of eternity…

Until she called.

"_My wall! My wall!"_

There's so much pain in those words and I can feel her calling. It's nothing tangible, there's no sound to it, only a tugging cry for help, a little girl's hands pulling on my arm, demanding the power to fix what's been broken by negligence and distant years.

"_Stop it! Stop disappearing!"_

I'm crying, no she's crying and this person called Eiko that I love and am is wailing. I've been growing numbly into the walls of a small girl's heart for so long, but now these walls are shattering around me and it all begins to crumble away. This heart is breaking and I realize I'm the only one left with enough sense of self to do anything.

Phoenix and Carbuncle, Fenrir, my friends and companions… They've turned to stone, forgotten in this heart and breaking lines run crisscross over all. They shatter with it, no longer aware that they are Eidolons and not this damaged heart, leaving only me.

I'm alone to answer this summons and I materialize into the open world I can no longer remember ever being part of, though I think I did walk freely on it, once, but maybe that's a dream. There's no time for dreams now though as I roar with all the pain of this girl I'm part of. I find I want to claw and tear, rip apart whoever has hurt Eiko so. Eiko, my Eiko, my friend… Me? I have to protect her, can't leave her alone… I can't remember anymore if I'm Eiko or this girl I find myself holding so dear is Eiko, but I will protect us both.

I'm searching for an enemy, any enemy, to pound with this fury now, but none presents itself. The world is a white sphere with no end. Is this really the world? Somehow this feels wrong… Where is the wind? Where is the sun? Where is the sea?

Figures pull themselves out of the whiteness around me and I realize I'm surrounded by Eidolons and the small girl I need to protect is gone. What's going on? I don't understand… Where's…Eiko?

"Where is she?" I shout at these figures who stare down at me, all faceless in their distance. My voice is a sad croak, but I can still roar. My yells reverberate everywhere, yet the crushing silence descends again and I can feel myself drifting away.

"Madeen."

Who is Madeen?

"They're all dead."

All dead? Who is dead? Where is Eiko?

"The summoners are gone."

Summoners…gone? Coherent thought is starting to stir now and things are falling into place.

"Eiko. Eiko's not dead. Where is Eiko?" This is not the open world I know.

"Broken…" I can see their mouths now, moving and speaking. The words the lips are forming can't be real though. They can't. "Broken. She's fallen with…"

This is not the open world. This is…

"The Eidolon Wall." The words they're speaking can't be real, but they are. This is the hidden light within the Eidolon Wall where the souls of the summoner tribe flee after death. This world of white light is in truth their forgotten spirits and these Eidolons…these Eidolons…

They are the Forgotten.

"You are the Forgotten," they tell me, somehow able to know my clouded mind. I am forgotten?

"This is where the fault lines collide. Listen to the planet's heartbeat. Breathe slowly, and calm your mind. Let memories return to you," they say and I remember those words. They are the inscription on the Eidolon Wall for little summoner children learning the ways of their tribe. I follow them now, breathing slowly, in and out, in and out. My mind goes blank and I let the numbness that has been slowly encasing me break away and the memories begin to shine forth as I listen to a beat of life I've felt all along.

"Where is my summoner?" I'm feeling anger again, but this is my anger now, not Eiko's. I am…a person. My name is…Mog? Madeen. Mog. Does it matter? "What have you done with her?" I'm flexing my claws and I can almost feel them shredding through the flesh of these forgotten Eidolons. They've done something, something to Eiko!

"She destroyed the Eidolon Wall. When it broke, she broke. She's gone; hiding. Soon she'll fade away. There is no Wall anymore, but we continue on. Where there is an absence..." These Eidolons only speak in riddles! I growl and their faces gain haunting eyes; the world is coming back into focus. Where there is an absence…

"You moved the remnants of spirits into her broken heart!" I accuse and they don't deny it. I'm gnashing my teeth now, but there's nothing I can do. If the spirits of the dead summoner's are in Eiko's heart and I were to destroy them, then I would destroy her heart. They said she broke the Wall. Why did she break the Wall?

"Because she was afraid. Because she realized her past had slipped away." I glare at them; how can they read my mind so? They take no notice and it's like being surrounded by the carvings on the Eidolon Wall; emotionless, expressionless, merely flat pictures on chiseled rock.

Why would she be afraid? The past isn't everything. Why would she hide? Who is she hiding from? Me?

"She wants to bring it back," the Forgotten Eidolons tell me and I can't comprehend. Bring it back? Bring what back? The Eidolon Wall? Madain Sari? The summoner tribe? They've all been beyond help for so long… Before she was born. Before I was born.

They are lost to everyone.

"Are they?" A voice asks and I find I've fallen into a part of Eiko's heart I've never touched. It used to be so small, hardly noticeable, but now this dark part of her heart is the blackest night; there is no light anywhere. The only thing here is a small girl demanding I answer. "Are they really lost?" She asks and there's a black fire to her voice I've never heard before.

I give her the only hug an Eidolon can give a summoner: an awkward, uncomfortable one. Monsters and children have never hugged well, no matter how fond they may be of each other.

"You can't hold onto the past Eiko. That's why it's the past," I try to explain, though it's hard. I've been living so long without a past; how can I explain to her that the past means nothing, that it's the present that means everything?

She's so quite and I can feel the darkness growing closer. I vaguely wonder when such despair grew in her heart. I can't recall seeing it before, but now it dominates everything. There is no room for happiness anymore.

"I'll make the past the future," she whispers in the burning voice I've never heard before. She's talking madness, but it's twisted sense too. I try to tell her to let the past go in peace, but she grabs my furred hand before I can begin. "You'll help me, right Madeen? I can depend on you. Only you…You know…you understand..."

I find myself nodding as I draw her close and we huddle together in the darkness. I understand the pain… But is reviving the past right? I feel the numbness close in again and there is no Madeen or Mog or even Eiko. There is only Madain's Sorrow.

* * *

Loosing sense of self and clinging to a desperate girl, Madeen wonders if the past should be disturbed. What about the present? Do the other inhabitants of Madain Sari wonder at Eiko's screams? Next: _Poisoning His Breath--Fear of Amarant_. 


	5. Fear of Amarant

Note: All characters, places, ect. belong to Square Enix.

Warning: This chapter contains strong language (I know this is rated T, but it's been pretty clean so far so... I thought a warning might be in order).

I forgot to put the disclaimer, title and next chapter blurb on this chapter! Well they're there now.

* * *

_Poisoning His Breath--Fear of Amarant_

I don't think I've ever had a morning where I've woken up and gone, "Bring it on world! The Flaming Amarant is ready to take you all on!" Shit. I don't think I've ever had a morning where I've woken up. Usually I've skipped sleep and gone on awake straight through the night. I remember it used to creep the brats out, how I'd stay awake for two-three days straight and they'd wake up to find me just staring at them, like some psycho. I think I made Vivi cry once doing that and I know Eiko sicced her whipped monster friends on me that one time. I got even, but damn, that bite in the ass didn't heal anytime soon.

The point is: I don't like to sleep. You never know what's waiting to jump you while you're off in Lala Land and I don't trust anyone, not even the Monkey, to watch my back enough to stop it from happening. Best case scenario, we'd all get slaughtered because someone couldn't keep watch. That's the best case. Well this was probably the one night I've actually ever slept through. Usually I just keep going for days until I find a safe hideout and crash some time around noon. Things don't like to get you during the day is my reasoning. I sure as hell don't like to go out and kill things in broad daylight. That's just asking for trouble, when everyone can see you do the deed.

This time though, I couldn't help it. With the blood loss and the boredom and well fuck, I got my ass handed to me by a five story cyclops. And don't get me started on the fucking pony friend it had. Lani keeps telling me it was a unicorn; she can jump off a damn bridge. She probably thought it was cute as hell.

I'm going a little stir crazy. I hate being laid up in bed. I hate beds. I hate houses. I hate anything with an implied box shape. Too confining. Besides, the time's ticking away and someone's got to do something about the brat. Save her…more like give her a good beating. Who sics rabid Eidolons on the guy that stopped them from being eaten alive by mist monsters?

Lani keeps drilling it into my head that she was possessed, but that's not what it looked like to me. That's another thing. I'm damn tired of listening to Lani. Who knew the bitch was so talkative? That's her outside the door right now, probably with some of her god awful cooking to shove down my throat. I throw the pillow at the door as it begins to open and I hear it shut with a satisfactory scream and the breaking of pottery. I know she'll give me hell for it later, but right now I don't really care.

I want to smack my fist against the wall in frustration, but my hand's shaking so bad I can't stand to look at it. The whole thing keeps playing through my head. It's driving me crazy. I couldn't do a damn thing! Well, I was able to bleed all over the ground and make a nice, red puddle for the dirt moogles to play in. No, what I can't get out of my head is that I couldn't do a damn thing for the brat. Helping isn't normally my style, but when you go through as much shit as I have with some people, you can't get yourself out of their business, no matter how much you'd like to.

Besides, she sicced a lightning shooting pony and a giant, one-eyed man in a smelly toga on me. Possessed, drunk or hypnotized, you do not do that to people who have protected your scrawny ass to the god damn moon and back.

_It's snowing… There's white everywhere, which is odd weather for Madain Sari. I only planned on stopping by for some food, mooching off Lani until she kicks my sorry ass out. Not that it bothers her. I can tell she gets lonely, misses the old life. I don't know why she stays in this hellhole. She says it lets her think._

_This damn weather; now I'm going to be stuck here until things calm down. It's working its way into a real blizzard. Which is strange. Since when does it snow in this wasteland?_

_I've been here for all of twelve hours and twenty-three minutes. I keep count; don't like to stay anywhere for more than three days. For some reason I hate this old house of the brat's though. Maybe it reminds me of that damn orphanage I grew up in. Or maybe it's just the sea. I've never had one good experience with the sea. Whatever it is, it makes me want to leave, which is bad when I'm trying to take Lani for whatever I can._

_She's giving me a hot mug of something—it looks like mud and I watch it for a moment to see if any worms slither out. I wouldn't be surprised. She's not the number one bounty huntress for nothing, or used to be anyways. If she wanted to, she could make anyone run screaming out the door._

_Speaking of the door, the fur balls are tramping in one by one like so much rubbish. Moogles annoy me. Maybe it's the way they never shut up and get the word 'kupo' stuck in your head. Or maybe it's their cheery outlook. I once met a moogle who'd been frozen in a block of ice and he still thought life was peachy keen. It makes me a little sick just thinking about it._

_These fur balls actually look a little worried. One of them even has the guts to come over and ask me for a favor. Usually we try to keep our distance, what, with me hating moogles and them not liking a fistful of claws shoved up against their throats. I don't know this one's name, but it's a fair bet it's something revolving around either kupo or mog. Moogles aren't very inventive when it comes to names or life or anything involving higher thinking._

"_Kupopo…It's really snowing... " The moogle actually looks a little nervous. I don't make the little guy feel any better by giving a grunt and slamming the mug down on the creaky old table. "The little moogles were playing hide and seek with Lady Eiko…kupo! We can't find her though and it's getting really bad outside! Can you find her Mr. Amarant? Kupo?"_

_I'm a little surprised. I had no idea the brat was here. Shouldn't she be living it up in Lindblum with Cid or whatever it is almost princesses do? Probably shopping or something girly._

"_We're not eating till Eiko gets here," Lani tells me and I guess that makes the decision plain enough. The most food I've gotten out of this tightwad all day is two fur ball nuts and she's made a big lunch. She must have known the brat was here._

"_Like I want to eat your crappy cooking," I tell her and slouch out the door. It really is coming down outside. It's hard to see through all the white and the sky's a mass of grey even though it should be shining noon. I think I hear something breaking in the distance. That can't be good._

_It's a hard trek around the village, but I can move pretty fast when I'm motivated. Needless to say, I'm not motivated very often, but right now my stomach is whining for food. After two days of eating nothing, two kupo nuts do not fill a stomach. Where the hell is that kid?_

_I'm coming to that wall with all the scribbles now. She wasn't in the square or by the entrance and I didn't see her near the coast, so that leaves the possibility of either she drowned—which means I'll never get to shovel Lani's cooking down my throat and tell her how truly crappy it is—or she's hiding out here. Things are getting worse the closer I come to the wall though and I'm definitely hearing screams now. I do a modified sprint the rest of the way, using my long legs to jump over the drifts._

_Surprisingly there's no snow inside the wall; the whole thing's untouched. Unsurprisingly there's the brat. She's always at the center of trouble, whether it has anything to do with her or not._

"_Brat!" I call, but she doesn't respond and I swear mentally. I'm going to have to drag her ass back to the house, I just know it and it's not like she's a scrawny six year old anymore. In fact, I'd say she's plumper than she needs to be, but telling her so would just get me smacked by any female creature within a ten mile radius, so I'll keep that to myself._

_I tramp out into the unprotected open beyond the wall, ready to take her back, no doubt kicking and screaming, but have to stop when something finally clicks. That's not just the brat; that's the brat Tranced. How I missed the glowing, pearly lights, the extended horn and wings I don't know, but I'm calling myself a dumbass right now. Something's up and don't I know it. Eiko may be royal pain in the ass, more so than Garnet who's the actual royalty, but she doesn't Trance over nothing._

_She's either really mad, in which case I think I'll leave—I can still feel that bite in my ass when I think about it—or she's really upset, in which case I'd better find the thing that upset her and knock it out fast or there's going to be a big whoop ass of Eidolon coming down and I just happen to unwittingly be in the vicinity._

_There's no one here though, just the brat and me. This damn Wall is starting to fall apart around us. I have to jump out of the way of a pillar and the entrance looks like it might be collapsing soon. I grab the brat who's standing there like the biggest idiot. This is why I hate kids. They're so useless! You always have to look out for them and walk them through every fucking little thing._

_I'm dragging her, but she just stares at me with those big, girly eyes. "Are they lost?" She's asking. I have no idea what crap she's talking about. Is who lost? Who cares? We need to leave this crumbling wall._

_She's wrenching her arm away though, surprisingly strong for something so annoying. I can see her lips moving, but I can't hear her over the sounds of breaking stone. I know what comes next though and a one-eyed giant is bursting from the ground, blue with ice. It's not alone; a whiny and there's a horse with a horn that looks more like a blade than anything else. The horse is blazing with lightning and the cyclops is reaching down to grab me._

_I'm shouting at Eiko to call them off, but she's already gone. Brat. I don't need her though. I can kill these things. I've faced worse. The lightning and the ice though… I can't fight back. No matter where I strike or how I dodge, these things don't stop and before I know it, something sharp is inspecting my guts, rearranging them into pretty patterns. I can't stop and give in to a wound. I have to keep going. But by blood is spilling out everywhere and the world's going dark as mist rises. Fuck it…_

My hand's still twitching and I can feel it, that thing I never thought I'd feel again after my parents were murdered. It makes my insides squirm and I can't stop staring at this shaking limb of mine. I'm afraid.

Damn it! I don't want to admit, can't admit it, but I am. This big body, these swift hands, I've trained and I've trained, worked myself nearly to death, but it isn't enough. I've defeated things that would make any sane person shit themselves without so much as blinking, but it just isn't enough. I couldn't win. No matter how I turn it over in my mind, I was utterly defeated. Even if I was stronger, faster, I know I still wouldn't have won. There's utter defeat in my mind and I can't stand it.

I've never been one to give up. If I'm still alive, this blue body of mine can do it. But this time, I found something it couldn't. It couldn't defeat those Eidolons. I have to wonder if maybe I've passed my prime. Am I going down the spiral of old age?

My hand is blurring before my eyes at the thought. I never believed I'd live to get old. I've always expected something to get me before then. Are these my declining years? Have I hit my limit?

I want to say, well shit, and shrug it off like normal, but I can't. The idea won't stop plaguing me. Am I loosing everything I've built up over this life of mine?

I felt it when I was fighting, before the horse got me. My strength…just seemed to fall away. It was as if my muscles had turned to water. Useless.

Something's happening to me. I don't understand it. When I can't depend on myself though, what can I depend on? And these damn hands won't stop shaking! I'm not afraid! I'm no coward! But why am I shaking?

I can't stand this anymore. This is driving me crazy. This room, this bed; I know I shouldn't move, but fuck it. I leave out the window so I don't have to hear Lani bitch. This wound stabs me with every motion, but I don't care.

I've got to do something, prove there's nothing wrong. She started this. I go to the ruins of what had been the Eidolon Wall. From there I follow the brat's trail out into the wasteland. I think for a moment as I stagger off, what if the same thing happens? I wish I could tell myself I'm not afraid.

* * *

Shaking hands and a biting wound, Amarant wanders out into the wasteland after Eiko. With fear eating him inside though, will things prove different than their last encounter? Can he overcome this doubt or will he be devoured alive? In the forests another entertains doubts. A chance meeting with a monster. Next: _Case of the Ragtimer--Currency Fact_. 


	6. Case of the Ragtimer

Note: All characters, places, ect. belong to Square Enix.

This chapter is really short. The next one will be longer though. And the Ragtimer only has one eye (just so no one thinks I can't count or something). In the last chapter the two summons were Ixion (10) and Cyclops (Tactics).

* * *

_Case of the Ragtimerm--Currency Fact_

Maybe I just dreamed it, but I think it might have been true, once, a long, long time ago.

I know they say I was born out of mist, a monster raised by kind humans. It's a lovely story really. A poor old couple longed for a child, but none they could have. Until one day in the mountains they found one, strange of face to be sure, but so sweet and innocent they decided to raise it. As the years went by though, it became apparent that it was no human babe they had found, but a monster child! Still, he was good and kind and they loved him as their own. One day they sent him to town to buy supplies and all the other children laughed at him for his looks and his endless questions, but he didn't mind. He continued to ask and soon it became a quiz and for every question answered wrong, he would take money to bring home to his kind human parents, who never wanted for anything anymore. So it was that he laughed now and not the children who knew nothing and he and his parents lived happily.

Such a sweet tale, so innocent and loving. A couple love a monster. A monster loves a couple. There is no hatred, animosity, only sharing of what little people –and monsters— have. Too bad it isn't true. There never was any generous old couple or laughing town children; no money or happy country life. All there ever was was a monster.

Sometimes when I think back into the mist of years gone by, I think I can remember, barely, hands that were soft flesh and not monstrous claws hidden by gloves. I feel tears on cheeks that don't exist and two eyes that see the world smile instead of one that sees it wither and die.

If I close this one monstrous eye, I can see a world in my head with rising towers and flying ships. It's all a haze though and it's gone so fast that I think I might have only dreamed it. What it is I don't know. A home, I could only wish so; a place conjured by my imagination, I can't help, but think such.

What am I?

There is no answer, only the safe silence of the woods. Here no one hurts me, questions me. Here I am tolerated, if not entirely accepted. The towns, the villages, they have no place for me and chase me away. The monsters of the forests have no need for me, but they will let me stay if I do not bother them.

I am not human and I am not monster, I am something far from either. All these facts I know I collect in the hopes that one day I might find out just what I really am. Was I a monster who tried to imitate humans and became such blasphemy? Or was I a human who lost his way and was marked for sins forgotten? So far I have found no answer, but dreams and stories. One day, one day the facts will show me who I really am, what I really am. The facts are everything.

"What are the facts?" A voice rasps in my ear, rough and torn with screams. I know this voice, it is a fact, but it has changed, mutilated. There is a creature behind me that was once a little boy who answered all my questions so well. He wore an oversized hat and adorned my targets with flames. Now he is different, no longer boy and I think I've found someone like me, neither human nor monster. Together we are blasphemy.

"You can defeat Ragtimer," I'm telling him and his claws dig into my fragile flesh.

"True," He answers and black blood is welling up from where he touches me to stain his once white gloves. "Who burned down Black Mage Village? Was it you?"

"False." Are we so alike? He can still remember what has twisted him into such a shape; I can only believe I was born as such. Black Mage Village has burned to the ground, it is only ashes now. The mages are dead or dying. He is alone too.

Now his brutal claws are hovering over my heart, cutting lines into my skin. "Then who did?" He's hissing and I can feel those glowing eyes of his, burning into me, trying to rip away the answer like his claws can rip away my heart.

"I do not know," I admit and his hand suddenly burns with flames. "False!" He denies, watching me writhe beneath his touch. "The only currency acceptable for your life are the facts," He's snarling and I have to wonder if it's worth it. I could die here and no one would care, not even I would care. But then what would happen to the little boy who used to answer my questions? The world does not need any more defilements of life like me, neither one thing nor another, but in between.

"I hear from the monsters of a man who wanders the forests, creating a trail of death," I whisper. It is a rumor, nothing more, but I have seen the trails this man walks and only the trees survive is passing. The people, the monsters, the grass; they litter the ground where he has been, their heart's blood coating everything.

The claws, once a child's hands, relinquish me and I know he is leaving to find this man. "Viv—" I begin, but he flinches at the name. He is no longer Vivi Ornitier; now he is like me. Our only names are the things others call us. I am Ragtimer and he is… "Waltz, I will help."

Two things, neither monster, nor person, out to track a murderer. There is no innocence in these woods. If there was ever laughter it is dead. Three eyes and only evil is visible. How did it come to this?

* * *

Two alike; if they are people any longer, it can not be sure. Deaths must be avenged, a murderer delivered to Hell's gates. But who is it that kills so wantonly? And why? Halfway around the world, another soon wonders the same, yet thoughts are fleeting. Next: _Shards Of The Spear--Loss of Freya_. 


	7. Loss of Freya

Note: All characters, places, ect. belong to Square Enix.

Yes, it's been forever since an update, I'm sorry. I've been very busy and writer's block didn't help (Freya has been especially difficult this is my first time writing her specifically). I'll try to catch up on the updates I've missed! I owe four I think (jeez, that makes like a month!).

Warning: There are references to self mutilation (nothing very graphic or mainly focused upon). Just so people who are do not wish to read anything referring to that sort of stuff know.

* * *

_Shards of the Spear--Loss of Freya_

Every night I feel my life draining away; one last shallow breath, one more bleary-eyed look at the ceiling of this stone house, and I close my eyes, never to wake again. _Lay thy head down to rest and forsake thee coming dawn…_Life is gone and I am dead, lying in my bed, a cold cadaver, laid out in Dragon Knight state.

Every morning the world reclaims my soul and I want to weep hot, salty tears that burn my face. I cried my life's worth of tears long ago though and the world won't grace me with anymore, so I must suffice with a few dry rasps to pass for sobs as whatever devils follow in my wake dance around my bed, chanting their silly songs. _Not yet, not yet, not yet, my love!_ Or is that him, my poison, my bane, my dear heart, whispering in my ear?

I don't know, I don't know, but the pain, the agony, of this affliction I willingly subject myself to kills me again and again, until death seems the natural end to everyday. At his glance my blood drains away, at his word, my breath grows weak, at his smile, my heart, already eternally riven, crumbles. He cripples me daily with this hell, always in new and excruciating ways, never trite, and it begins to crisscross lacerations on my skin. One strike, two strikes, three…Freya, what are you doing with that knife…?

I've heard Amarant's muttered quips, Zidane's confusing lectures, Dagger's tactful hints; my friends, my countrymen, my Dragon Knight brethren all say the same thing behind my back. _Why does she stay? Forgotten, spurned, cast aside. Doesn't she get the message?_ Or maybe it's just in my head, I couldn't say, don't know, can't be sure…

Some days I can't get these whispers out of my mind and they drive me crazy, give me no peace. _He forgot you Freya! Forgot!_ When he speaks those little words to me, "I love you," the words I longed for so much, used to listen for in my dreams, all I hear is the torrent of perpetual rain and it's telling me these things I don't want to know. _He doesn't remember, doesn't want to. Not you. You are forgotten. Forgotten Freya. Forgotten, forgotten, Freya the forgotten._

There are demons following in my wake, hiding in my shadow, sleeping in my pantry, dancing around my bed. One strike, two strikes, three…no one ever knew Freya was such an artist. Missing fur, jagged lines, rusted red; bleed the poison away.

I used to think I was strong. I used to think I was good. I used to think I was many things. Freya the Dragon Knight. Freya the Protector of Gaia. Now I know I was oh so wrong. So wrong, so wrong; the knife reveals the truth hidden underneath my flesh.

One strike, two strikes, three…

"Freya, it's time to see the King."

He's standing at my door; poison, bane, lover, devil, the Burmecian of many faces who kills me swiftly every night and resurrects me bitterly every morning. Fratley is standing at my door, waiting for my company. The love, the hate, it all wells up within me, but no, keep it in Freya, keep it in. There's no problem here, no problem at all. This is what you always wanted, always, always…

A man who can't remember. A home with the feel of a prison. A country broken and shoddily repaired. This is what I always wanted…

When I think about my life these past five years, I wonder how it came to this. On the outside I'm still the same; proud, dignified, strong, the prime example of a Dragon Knight. On the inside though my soul has become hollow and all the wonderful ideals I used to fight for—honor, duty, love, _to protect these things_—are either gone or brittle shells of what they once were. Passion for the cause no longer stirs my spirit and the thought of the future's brightness only makes me weary. Tomorrow used to hold wonderful promises, but now it only means one more day of living this drudgery others call life.

Sometimes I blame Fratley for this downfall. Sometimes I bless him for opening my eyes to my true worth. To be forgotten is worse than death. It is to be worthless, useless, the trash of life. All those memories, all those moments shared, the things we taught each other; they hold no value, made no mark upon the world, upon us. They were life ill spent.

_Worthless, stupid Freya._

"Freya, it's time to see the King."

Fratley's standing in my doorway and I feel myself growing weak at the sight of him. The man I chased after for so long, the man who forgot me, the man who taught me that there was more to life than sacrificing yourself for duty, the man who kills me every night and resurrects me every morning. I love him, I blame him and I try desperately not to crumple at his feet, but I don't know where all the strength I used to have has gone and it's so hard not to let on that something's wrong here, oh so wrong.

There's a knife under the mattress and artistic patterns from its touch hidden by my coat. The quilt hides the evidence of my work and there's a man who'd pale to see what I've been up to in this room alone standing at my door. A king is waiting to see a Dragon Knight to protect his kingdom and this Dragon Knight is hoping to die in this miserable three roomed flat that makes up 'home'. It's not exactly life, but it's existence.

"Okay, let's go," I tell my Dragon's bane and he gives me a small smile that used to make my heart melt, but now just fills me with ennui. We leave this pit of a house and walk down the drenched streets of Burmecia, side by side, the dead and the blind. Few citizens are about so early; of those that are, some stare, some point, some whisper and I feel a twinge inside and those words run through my head again._ Forgotten Freya. Forgotten, forgotten, Freya the forgotten._

It's a chant to match my light steps and I'm sure there are evil mischief makers following in our shadow, though I don't turn around, that would only satisfy them. Just keep marching Freya, marching to the end. Don't look back, don't halt those feet. If you stop now you will fall.

"I think we've really rebuilt. Burmecia looks more beautiful everyday," Fratley murmurs and I have to wonder against what he is comparing these words. He only remembers Burmecia as a ruin. The quite beauty it once held is gone, it's fallen so far. The houses look like rubble, the streets are somehow never clean anymore and there is overcrowding everywhere as some parts of the city are not currently usable due to monster infestation. I feel like I'm standing next to a bad imposter. The things he says make me laugh at their stupidity. Beautiful? Beautiful? My beautiful Burmecia is dead. This shell mocks us all.

Where has the hope for the future gone? Why does everything look bleak? Wasn't there once light? If only someone could tell me please.

I simply nod –no need to insult the man for his unwitting idiocy— and we continue on in silence. It's a comfortable silence, one we've perfected over the past five years. It works well for us, not to talk. Then I don't recall the things he's tossed aside in his forgetfulness and he doesn't notice my growing apathy taking place over what were once emotions. Maybe we are the perfect couple, able to ignore and hide the things we detest about each other in this silence. No one need ever know that we sleep in different rooms, the last and only time we kissed was the Festival of the Hunt three years ago, that when we accidentally touch we mutter sorry like strangers. No one need know that within the walls of our shared house we live solitary existences, interacting only over food and laundry.

The trip to see the King is a quick and quiet one, undertaken in what must seem amiable silence to the casual observer. I wonder if this is how actors feel, putting on false displays, leading people to believe things that are not true, if even only by not contradicting what you know they will believe. Is this a lie? Or is this what being a couple feels like? I find I can't care anymore.

"_Freya, you're still…training?"_

"_I can't best you if I don't train Fratley."_

"…_Is that so? There's more to life than being the best."_

"_Guarding Burmecia, yes. Yet Burmecia is not currently in any pressing danger."_

"…_Sometimes you're so dense Freya…"_

This section of Burmecia is abandoned, left to the monsters who claimed it after the city's evacuation five years ago. There are things that hide in the dark recesses here, things that could easily best a grand dragon and things that could just as easily break my neck if I'm caught unawares. Even in my numbed state of existence I still feel the need for caution. Don't run, don't make any unnecessary noises, move like a shadow, unobtrusively and silently.

This was the King's request, to clear the monsters from this section of Burmecia, the main boulevard. It had been an ongoing battle for the past five years and most of my once beloved city has been reclaimed, but some parts, some parts have proven too stubborn. Civilians, soldiers, Dragon Knights; all have failed to dislodge these pests from their crevices. Now it is the duty of Fratley and I. If we can't surely do it, none can.

For now we have decided to split up and scout around, take note of the worst monster infestations and any particular gruesome beasts that would be best dealt with sooner than later. Creeping through the streets I know so well, trying to keep in mind that for now this is enemy territory, I feel on some distant level a stirring of sadness for these taken places I could not protect. It is only another reminder that I was never strong, the things people say are a lie. I hold this thought dear to my heart, if only because the slight agony it brings is a feeling, some feeling, any feeling and I am short on feelings these days.

I arrive in the main square with its ruined fountain, the basin filled with a disquieting sludge that ripples sluggishly under the drops of Burmecia's perpetual rain. Mist has begun to blanket the area, giving it an abandoned, ghostly feeling. Trailing my claws along the fountain rim, I remember the last time I was here was five years ago with Fratley. It's hard to imagine myself and the Burmecian from them as the same person. I think back on it like a person reading a text, not one who lived it.

There are footsteps sounding behind me and I carefully adjust my grip on my spear. Just because it doesn't sound like a monster does not me there is not one behind me. I glance back and true enough there is a beast emerging from the mist. As the straw colored mane and sinewy purple skin becomes apparent I swear underneath my breath. It's a behemoth. I don't know how it came to be in Burmecia, but I must, at the least, persuade it that the town is bad for its health so a location change is in order. There's only one way to persuade a behemoth and I have no one to back me.

This is going to be a nuisance.

The behemoth has seen me and I have little time to prepare before it lunges, powerful claws reaching for my lithe form. A quickly executed jump brings me out of harm's way and I take a mere pause before lunging in with my spear. It traces a feeble line down the beast's open hide and I have to jump back as its teeth seek my flesh. Another attempt at injury proves only slightly more fruitful as my weapon draws a small blossom of blood, not nearly enough to even draw the behemoth's attention.

This time I'm not quite quick enough as it bats me to the side like twig. I wince as I meet the stone street and my body sets aflame with a fire tracing the tapestry lines across my body. This isn't enough to bring me down though, never. I am a Dragon Knight. I will always endure.

I rise and we continue. Strike and counter, dodge and block. There's no "upper hand" in this battle. We're both trying to simply survive. I strike; the beast's paw is useless, impaled upon my spear. The creature swipes; my movement is hindered as my ribs bruise under the impact.

For a moment I think that this is for Burmecia, for my people, and I'm awash in feelings I haven't felt in these last couple of years of waiting, waiting, waiting for something to _happen_. I have something that must be protected _now_, not in the "worst case scenario", not in the past. My spear finally penetrates the behemoth's thick throat, slicing a major artery and I'm swimming in dark, thick blood, but it's not over yet. This beast is determined and in a dying effort it clamps its powerful jaws over my shoulder, biting down with all the strength it can muster.

I give something between a scream and a hiss and try to hold still, feeling my opponent's life slip away as its jaws slacken. I will wait until the end with you monster. I will see your final moments, giving proof that you did live. Now it collapses and the street is no longer a muddy brown, but an acrid red, like rust, staining outwards from a dark pool in which I am standing. The rain falls down and I still live and what's more, feel alive. There is work to be done for Burmecia!

As I revel in this rediscovered passion I do not notice how gravely I have misjudged the situation. Monsters, even behemoths, do not always travel alone. The unseen foe, smaller, swifter, quieter, attacks from behind at this moment and I am at a loss to defend myself as I collapse under its weight. My spear flies out of reach and paws force the air from my lungs. There are no more breaths to be captured as the behemoth's mate presses me into ground, no more breaths, but breaths of dirt and rain and blood. I can't comprehend this though and continue to desperately attempt to pull in air. My head is going blank and the world is slipping away as a monster breathes down my back. All I can think is maybe it's better this way…

_Someone walks down these empty streets where it rains, surrounded by young children, but is it me? The children are running away, slipping from the person's fingers and no matter how much they call, none return. A search has begun. It is a demented version of hide-and-seek as this person grows more frantic. Down an alley, across a side street, up a flight of stairs; the young ones are gone, untraceable, and now this person must weep because these children are dear._

_Who is this person?_

I wake up sore and wet. I don't know why. It is hard to breath so I roll over and my body protests. All over, pain. Water is falling, yet it only makes me shiver. I have to sit up, though the motion makes the world flash bright. I'm somewhere, somewhere dark. There are stone houses and cobbled streets, but it looks abandoned. How did I get here?

Standing up, I try to assess the situation. What is the situation?

No, forget the situation. I must return to where I have come from, my place of safety, my…home?

Which way is home?

I shudder as I drag myself down the street, limping aimlessly. Confusion swirls in my mind as I delve into its murky depths.

Who am I?

* * *

A monster killed, a warrior lost, Freya wanders, not sure where to go. Alone and weaponless, all sense of past self lost, she could be easy prey for those who cross her path. There are others though who question this life they lead as they wander the roads. Next: _Case of Puck--Running Crown._


	8. Case of Puck

Note: All characters, places, ect. belong to Square Enix.

Update day! (but I skipped last week...) And yes, every one has some sort of problem in this story (I feel so mean, but it's so fun!). Some day I think I'd like to go more into Puck than I will here in this story. I always found him interesting.

* * *

_Case of Puck--Running Crown_

I think there was a mistake, but I'm not sure if it was yesterday, last week or years ago. I'm not even sure I was the one who made it. Am I the one who caused these things? Or was it the ones chasing me right now as I run through the crowds of the lower parts of Treno? Or was it my weak, kingly father who sits on his unearned throne? Or maybe it was…her…

I have to find somewhere to hide; my heart is ready to burst. I've run from Lindblum to Dali to South Gate and now Treno, but somehow I can't loose them. Through the weeks and days, hours and minutes, I know they're on my trail and I'm afraid to rest. I'm afraid they'll slit my throat in my sleep; the thought of the knife that will do the job going through my throat so smoothly, or the hands that might turn to it instead silencing me so quietly, makes me want to puke. I would if I had eaten anything in the past few days.

I slip down a ladder and double back, hearing my pursuers pass by overhead, their big boots clunking, making them sound like the buffoons I mistook them for. I slink through the heaps of trash called houses for the poor of this 'noble' town and the friends I have here wave silently, knowing well enough that to call out might mean capture for me. I am no stranger in these parts; the dirt and grime, questionable items and acts, the diseases that breed before anyone with eyes; they are all familiar to me. A crash sounds a ways behind me and I hear voices arguing. My pursuers are not far behind; I slip further into the shadows and down a broken sewer grate, into the waste below. I hope this will deter them from continuing the hunt, but somehow I feel it will only mean more pain for me if they catch me.

I am a prince, a prince of a proud people. There is a country to which I belong by species, a throne to which I am bound by name and a duty to which I am trapped by blood. It's a vicious circumstance and I wonder if that's why she did the things she did. When she slapped me, when she cursed, when she wept, when she stood atop that battlement and told me she was sorry; did she do those things because she was 'sick' like everyone told me, or did she do those things for the same reasons I did those things: because every day you sit on that throne you know you are killing people. Is that why you did the things you did…Mother?

I've made it a point in my life to never steal beyond what I need and trick my way into the rest. I think it was only last week —though I was never one for keeping time— that I saw them. With their slow speech and clumsy movements, how could I not mistake them for a bunch of morons? And I was right, in a way. It was child's play to make them loose one of their packs and when I opened it I found not only the food I was hoping for, but old manuscripts and magic equipment worth more than any currency I've actually held. The proper thing to do would have been to leave it. I don't steal items I have no use for and I don't pawn what doesn't belong to me. These past few years these morals values have been slipping though and I found myself selling the items to anyone who would take them; all except one. I don't know why it spoke to me. Maybe it's because it looks like…her… It's just a little portrait of some Cleyran painted on the inside of a shell, nothing important. When I look at this picture though, it makes me feel like the one person who ever really cared about _me_, not the heir of Burmecia, not the Prince, just plain Puck, is close and in their eyes I'm someone, not a street kid, not royalty, not a thief and not a country's destined future. I'm a person in the eyes of this little picture and it feels like someone finally understands.

I should have ditched it, thrown it away, when they kept coming, but I haven't. I find myself possessive of it. It's their fault for being so stupid as to loose it. It's mine now and besides, it's just a little picture. If they're mad about the stupid books and equipment, they can no doubt easily get it back. One dumb picture isn't going to hurt them. I keep it tucked under my cap as I run, to make sure I don't drop it. I need it more than they do!

I think she said something like that once. She used to be real secretive about her fights with the ministers, but after awhile she didn't care anymore. Everyone knew about them anyway. I have this image of her in my mind, standing in the throne room, yelling at the ministers, her dress all wrinkled and her hair knotted. I think she was saying something like, 'Cleyra needs me more than Burmecia!' That's right…she…was…from Cleyra.

I made some time in Treno, but they're catching up fast. It's been a few days and now I'm reaching Dali. But where to go from here? I could go back to Lindblum; someone would hide me; or try to disappear in Chocobo's Forest. Somehow I know they'll find me though, where ever I go, and when they do, it won't be fun. I think I only have one choice if I want to get out of this mess. I'm so dirty and tired, hungry and fading, barely keeping on, that I'm just desperate enough to choose it too. I have…to go back to Burmecia… The thought of having to ask my father to protect me makes me shiver in distaste. I know what his idea of protection is, have seen it all my life. He would wrap me in a dictated life, parallel to his, try to make a king out of me when I'm so clearly not one. He would have me sit on that throne and murder the people I know daily with every decision I make. But I have nowhere to turn… I've run out of options. It's my life, or…

She used to talk about life a lot. I remember when she hit me, she'd scream about how precious these things were, how we couldn't play with them from our gilded home. Her favorite sermon was the one where she lamented that she couldn't help the world. Sometimes she'd whisper it like a saving prayer during the few times she put me to bed, clasping her hands together as if seeking divine forgiveness from the worlds stone gods, her lips repeating over and over, 'How can I help the suffering? Please, please, I must help. But how? How? Please, I must…I must, I must, Imust, ImustImustimustimustimustimust…' On and on until it was a sobbing chant that gave me nightmares and I'd hide my head under the pillows, trying not to hear these words so private that none should know, least of all me. It felt like peeking on my nanny when she was using the chamber pot; obscene, wrong. She was always concerned about life, any life. I wonder what she'd say if she saw me now. What a dumb thought. If she could see my now I wouldn't need the picture.

I'm almost there now. Trekking across Daines-Basin, I have to stop and think about what I'm doing. I'm going back to my old man. I'm hiding behind him and his power, placing my troubles on him and Burmecia. What do I expect him to do? Surround me in guards? Place Dragon Knights at my side day and night? Buy my followers off with money?

I feel a little sick inside and I stop to sit on a rock. Somehow it kills me to have to depend on someone. I feel like I'm crawling back to everything I left behind, hoping it'd turn into a forgotten dream. It's not that I hate Burmecia, but… I clamp my hands over my muzzle, trying to hold in the fear I'm feeling. If I go back, I may never get out again. They'll watch the doors, the windows, the balcony; when I eat, when I sleep, when I so much as blow my nose in my hand, someone will be there, watching me, directing me, correcting me. They'll think they can make a Prince out of me, guttersnipe though I am. They couldn't make a Queen out of the bar slut my mother was, yet they keep trying, thinking they can change a person's true nature.

Mist is rising pretty thick now, hardly dampened by the perpetual rain here. I'm soaked and more than a little cold; I need to get moving, regardless of where I go. I know they're only hours behind me. I saw them coming down the mountain after me this morning. If I stay in one place, they'll catch me, and I heard some of the things they have planned when I doubled back in Treno; they weren't pleasant things.

I get up, shaking myself a bit, but I'm too late in continuing on. An arrow flies out of the mist, pinning my foot to the ground. I try not to scream in agony; I have my pride. Still, I can't help whimpering as blood begins to well up around the shaft. Figures are coming out of the mist now and it's them; they don't look happy to see me. In fact, they look more than a little bloodthirsty. I can't run anymore. The street kid part of my mind tells me to cringe and beg for some sort of mercy. Somehow I find myself defiant of this though, standing straight and looking my attackers in the eye. Words that no one should know they are so foul come to my tongue and I hurl them angrily, as if they are weapons that might save me. I never thought I had any pride, but now I find I won't let myself be killed cowering. I can't really fight, but I'll take what comes like the adult everyone's always telling me I should be. I wipe the snot dripping from my nose at the thought of the anticipated beating and try to look like more than a dirty, ragged, rat kid who's about to get his ass handed to him by four scary men.

One of them slaps me to quiet me, holding up a heavy axe with a wicked edge. "Yap all you like little rat. We'll have our amulet back and your hide to boot," he's telling me with a wicked grin and before I know what I'm doing I lunge forward and bite him like a cornered dog. He tastes like dirt and rotten cabbage and his blood welling up around my incisors doesn't help my state of mind, but it's worth it to hear him yelp, to let him know I'm more than defenseless prey. One of the others kicks me and the air rushes out of my lungs as I double over, collapsing to my knees, despite the pain this causes in my foot. He grins and pulls me up for another hit. I try to bite him too, scratch at him with my claws, but I'm down again before I realize his punch has connected. They gather around and it's like the Mu baiting little kids do when they poke caged ones repeatedly with sticks, until the poking turns to slapping and the slapping to hard whacks that break fragile bones.

My rib pops in sharp agony and a white light flashes in my eyes for a second. I'm groaning now, though I try to keep it quiet. One of them holds a knife blade to my hand and I hear something about cutting off my thieving fingers. The edge nicks me as I try to pull away and now blood is dripping on my face as one of them gives me another kick to urge my compliance.

I can't bear to look so instead I focus on the mist beyond them, knowing this is going to be a painful and messy death. Somehow it seems a fitting end to a son who was born a bastard and a Prince who was born a street rat. At least I didn't jump off a battlement to go splat below and make messy baby art like my Mother. I can say I fought for survival and that's all anyone can do.

There's a shadow in the mist and it's growing larger, clearer, until there are feet and I follow up the legs to a red coat I think I know. This has to be my imagination playing tricks on me; this can't be real. This mirage swings a spear and the man between us falls to pieces, cut nicely in two. Blood is in my eyes now and all torment has stopped, but I can't focus. This can't be real.

One, two, three; they attack my savoir together, but they're no match; she far outclasses any ruffian alive. That spear flashes in graceful arcs that leave a blurring image behind, the eyes unable to keep up. Soon it's just the two of us in a muddy puddle of limbs and blood, some of it mine, most of it theirs and none of it hers.

She looks at me with cold eyes and for a moment I wonder if she's going to impale me. Instead she rubs her head and looks at me blankly. I wait for her to help me, expect no less; after all, she saved me. I am so wrong though as she walks right by me.

"Freya!" I moan angrily. How can she ignore me?

She halts and slowly turns, staring at me with puzzled eyes. "Fre…ya…? Is that my name then little boy?" She demands, leaning on her spear.

What game is this? "Of course that's your name Freya! Now help me! Help me!" I shout with all the voice I can muster, trying to sit up, and failing miserably as my head spins from the pain in my ribs.

She kneels down next to me, still looking bewildered. Suddenly she grabs my hand, the one that is cut, and I yelp, but she doesn't seem to notice. "Then…you know me child?" She whispers and I look into the blank eyes of Freya Crescent, Hero, Dragon Knight and player of evil pranks. She must be joking. But no…that look…

I groan, half in pain, and half in irritation. "What is it with you and Fratley? Must one of you have amnesia every time I'm in serious trouble!" I cry. I feel a faint coming on and it's taking everything I have to not simply expire on the spot from pain, frustration and the absurdity of the situation. I think the world hates me for the mistake I so clearly am.

* * *

A picture stolen, a child broken. Puck finds Freya in a well-known state. He once re-taught the world to Fratley, but even such small miracles are hard to perform. It is questionable if he can save what has been lost. There are more pressing problems at hand in the world though and others who must face them. Next: _Face in the Red Moon--Rebirth of Zidane._


	9. Rebirth of Zidane

Note: All characters, places, ect. belong to Square Enix.

Finally! Another chapter! I'm still here! It's been a while though. Hopefully I can get back on track soon. I really hope this at least makes up somewhat for the wait (probably not, but I tried). I changed the um, after, chapter, thing I put at the bottom (I messed up the order of my chapters before, oh no!).

* * *

_Face In The Red Moon--Rebirth of Zidane_

"_And then, and then…" The little fist goes into that tiny mouth, trying to suck the words out and this small body bounces in the huge bed I'm sitting on, pretty, blond, baby curls flying like ribbons of sun. "I'se rode 'round the whole courty'rd on my new pony!"_

Her little hand is limp and tears are blurring her sweet face in my vision, but I can't stop them from rolling down my cheeks in rivers. All I can do is grip her small body to me and try to hold on to reality. I'm tensing up, rigid all over in pain.

_I'm coming back from a trip to Lindblum, some talk with Cid and a night back in the Theater District like the old times. I'm a little stiff, but I won't say it. I'm only twenty-one, not some geezer, though I have to admit I feel a something like one. Must be all that fighting to save the world. When I see her come down those stairs as fast she can though, both feet on a step before proceeding to the next one, fingers gripping the poles holding the banister up, strong lungs belting out the word Da, all the stiffness melts away._

People are tugging at me, trying to take her away. I growl, something guttural and feral, and they drop back like carve spiders when the bandersnatch's around. They're palace servants and Alexandrian guards simply trying to help. All the same, I won't let them touch her. They've already done far enough.

_It's late. Dagger's at an important dinner, so that means it's just her and me. I sweep her off her feet and she squeals in delight as I wink at her and call her milady. Up the stairs we go, to her honey colored bedroom. There I drop her on the big bed with the satin sheets and pounce, tucking her in before she can so much as squirm and kiss her forehead goodnight. "Sleep tight milady Princess," I whisper with another wink and leave a candle burning for her before I leave._

A howl tears itself from my throat, an unearthly sound I've never made before, but which I make again because it is the only way I can find to thrust out this pain. Nothing has touched me, I'm not bleeding or bruised, but I feel as if someone's been examining my chest with the pointy tip of a well-kept spear. A third strange howl escapes me, practically bleeding with my loss, and I clutch my daughter's small, cold, dead body so tightly my muscles ache with the effort as the blinding lights of Trance play across my skin. My little Cornelia will never wake again, flash those startlingly green eyes at me, tug my tail and clamber up my back demanding rides; her cheeky mouth will never give me lip again and a bloodlust for the bastard who murdered her fills me desperately as my howl ends in a wordless sob.

I go limp as all energy flees me, leaving me weak and vulnerable to the claws of the world. Hands seize the moment and take her from me, quickly carrying her from the throne room. Before I know it everyone's gone and I'm alone in the dark, with only the angry, red moon to stare at my broken figure. I stir slightly, wondering where the day's gone. I swear it was late noon only moments ago, not long since Choco landed in the shade of the nearby forests of Alexandria.

My thoughts wander and I drift back to that morning, mere days ago, when I met Cid in Lindblum Castle. "Ah, Zidane. Let me be to the point," he'd said gravely when I'd swaggered into his throne room, carefree after a night spent in every low down spot of town imaginable with Blank and Marcus from taverns where gamblers shove the indebted against the walls demanding payment to back street alleys where not even the watch go and if they ever actually did, would soon find themselves stripped down to their bare skin with a kiss from a knife on their throat. It wasn't nice and it wasn't pretty, but these were the places I grew up in and it was kind of sad I went there to wash the stuck-up airs and cloying lies of nobility away, drinking, thieving and gambling along with the best of them. Cid's words had slowly penetrated my hangover and halted bordering desperate thoughts about how immensely lucky I had to be for Dagger not to find out about half the things I'd gotten up to during my time in Lindblum.

"Eiko is missing, as is Freya, and Black Mage Village is in ashes," Cid had said wearily, dropping onto his throne. He couldn't have wiped the smirk off my face more efficiently than if he'd told me I was terminally ill from last night's bad food and could expect to drop dead any moment now. "What about Vivi and the boys? Mikoto? The Black Mages and Genomes?" I'd asked quickly, trying to hold down panic; Vivi and Mikoto were good fighters, they wouldn't have let anything hurt their friends. With each question though Cid shook his head and I felt like someone had punched me in the gut, swift and hard.

"As far as is known, everyone is dead," Cid had said in a defeated voice. "I can only hope Eiko wasn't there."

I'd pulled myself out of shock and brought the world back into focus. "What is this about Eiko?" I'd asked. While I hadn't seen her in long while, I'd been planning on visiting her after I talked with Cid; I hadn't heard of her leaving. "She's not here?"

"She left two weeks ago. She and Hilda had a…debate on ladylike behavior. From what I've been told, she hopped a ship bound for the Outer Continent," Cid had murmured, his shoulders slumping slightly. I swear I could see him getting older before my eyes. It was as if all the happiness had gone out of him to be replaced with bone crushing worry. "She probably went to Madain Sari, but she always stops at Black Mage Village when she goes," he'd said, his voice slightly haunted and I could tell he was imagining her dead body already.

"She's a tough girl. She'd eat anything that tried to take her down alive and share it with her Eidolons," I'd reminded him consolingly, though really I was wondering if there was some sort of curse going around. It all seemed far too well timed for coincidence. My thoughts had then turned back to his earlier words.

"What about Freya?" I'd had to demand, remembering he'd said she was missing too. How could Freya go missing? I had never met a rat with a better sense of direction and a larger respect of responsibility. Freya Crescent just did not go missing. Eiko was prone to haring off here and there, but never Freya.

"She was clearing monsters out of Burmecia's lower city with Fratley. They split up and no one's seen her since two days ago. Iron-Tail's gone crazy looking through the capital and King Burmecia was practically forced at spear point to send him out to search for her," Cid had enlightened me and I'd given a low whistle. "Does he think Freya can't protect herself?" I'd wondered aloud, not understanding why Fratley would be so desperate as to threaten his king.

Cid had shaken his head, having no more idea than me. "Something must have happened," he'd said, his brows knitting together as he mulled Fratley's actions over. I'd leaned back slightly, raising my hand so that my finger could tap my chin while I thought. "Have you told Dagger?" I'd asked, knowing already what I had to do. He'd shaken his head and I'd nodded, affirming my plan to myself silently. "I'll go look for everybody. I'm sure to find them sooner or later. I'll ask Amarant. He's probably seen Eiko and Freya at least," I'd told him, feeling much better now that I was going to be doing something to fix the whole mess. Amarant would probably help me with a little coaxing too and between the two of us and Dagger who would certainly keep eyes and ears out, all our friends would be found soon. Freya, Eiko, Vivi and his boys, Mikoto, the Black Mages and Genomes… We'd find them all and bring them home. I'd thumped my chest then with a reassuring grin. "Leave it to me!"

"Thank you Zidane," Cid had said, seeming kind of relieved and I'd wondered for a moment if he'd been hoping I'd say what I did. If anything though, he was probably glad someone was out looking; he probably wanted to go himself and couldn't. I'd shuddered a little, thanking whatever forces there were in the world that I wasn't bound to a throne like that. Sure, I'm a king, but Dagger is the one sitting on the throne here and I've never made any pretenses to it.

I'd left quickly after that to gather my few things and find Choco. I had to get to Alexandria and tell Dagger what had happened and where I was going. She'd help as much as she could too and three people looking were much better odds than two. It was several days hard traveling, but finally Choco had landed in the familiar woods near Alexandria. The forest was cold and I think I remember mist floating between the trees, which I guess wasn't too odd, being not so far from Evil Forest.

My fingers now absently pick up something smooth and cold, fiddling with it, as I move to the broken glass of the window, staring out at the night sky where the red moon seems to be glowing extra maliciously tonight. I'm beginning to feel cold all over, as if my body's being slowly blocked in ice and it's an odd, numbing feeling radiating from within. First the soles of my feet through my boots, then at a crawling place up my calves and around my knees until the feeling drags itself up my thighs; I don't know what it is, but it eases the pain and I settle into it without a thought.

Without a thought is how I entered Alexandria this afternoon too, leaving Choco to do whatever the bird does when I'm not around. I remember there was a crowd when I got to the square, stagnant and kind of breathless. I'd had to actually shove people aside to get to the drawbridge, something I haven't had to do since my coronation five years ago. Strangely there hadn't been any guards at the entrance to the castle and I remember the hair on my tail had started to rise as I slowed and listened to the talk. The crowd was mostly silent, but there was an underlying buzz of fear and I picked out the words assassin and Queen easily enough. That was all it took to set me running as fast as I've ever done, faster even than when I went back to rescue Kuja and escaped the Iifa Tree's clutches in the process. My heart had beat painfully, like it was trying to tear itself out of my body and race on ahead at an even faster speed.

I remember my mind had become blank as I raced through empty courtyards and corridors, until I started climbing stairs littered with downed guards and a few Pluto Knights. If anything could have made me exceed my own agility, that was it and I crashed through the throne room doors so fast I had to wheel my arms to keep from toppling over. The room showed more signs of a fight, glass and mortar on the floor instantly catching my eye.

"Where is he?" I'd yelled, half out of my mind trying to find Dagger. She was always in the throne room around late noon, finishing up for the day. I couldn't understand why she wasn't immediately in my sight. "Where's the damn bastard? I'll kill him!"

That's when I saw her little body alone in a puddle of blood as if she was had fallen asleep on the floor again and that's when I think I broke. I remember there were lots of people in the throne room; knights and guards, nobles and officials, cooks and maids. They'd been moving to pick Cornelia up, but they stopped when I charged across the room and snatched her from them. I don't know how long I stood there in that pool of blood, embracing her cooling corpse. I think I snapped for a moment and I'm not sure if I'm not still snapped now as the numbing feeling grows up my hips and dives into my stomach where it seeps into my veins.

"Your Majesty," a voice says behind me and I can tell just by the even tone that it's Beatrix. Calm, collected General Beatrix, military genius and young veteran of war. "Where's Dagger?" I ask without turning around, even though I think, fear, tremble, that I already know the answer. It's the one reason I've delayed talking to anyone until now. I'm afraid what they'll tell me and the coldness burrowing into my body freezes the fear and builds a delicate wall of ice around me in preparation for the answer.

"Her Majesty…was mortally wounded in the defense of the Princess and carried off by an accomplice," Beatrix says, only a slight tremor in her voice testament to her nerve. The wall of ice turns into a blizzard and I swear I must be getting frostbite as I nod slightly to give my understanding. My wife is dead and I don't even have her body to kiss goodbye. Roaring winds fill my head and for a moment my consciousness reels. The moment passes and the red moon of Terra I'm beginning to despise becomes visible in my sight again.

"The populace needs addressing," Beatrix pushes when I make no effort to move from the window. "The city needs to know it's safe, that Alexandria is still strong."

"Of course," I murmur, turning the object I picked up over and over in between my fingers. "Alexandria needs a king," I sum up bitterly.

"Yes," Beatrix agrees quietly and I know she's waiting for orders. What the hell am I supposed to tell her when all I can feel is a biting chill scratching into my bones? I rub my thumb across the object in my hand and look down at it, wondering for the first time what it is that I've picked up. It's a palm-sized medallion of dull silver. Symbols are pressed into it's surface, raising smooth lines that join intricately to form a picture. It looks familiar.

"Inform the citizens of what has happened," I say after a while, turning around, the medallion still flitting through my hands. Beatrix's face flickers and she asks, "Right now Your Majesty?"

"If no one has a problem with it, then yes," I reply standoffishly, still thinking of the medallion, anything to distract from this hell. What is it doing here?

"Zi—Your Majesty, telling a country that one of their monarchs and the heir are both dead in one day would cause panic during the day. At night people will be far more likely to drink to cope and see things that are only in their imagination…there is a high chance of riots or crazed manhunts for assassins if you send out heralds so late in the evening," Beatrix tells me slowly, sounding like she's trying to respect my pain even as she tries not to throttle me the stupid decision.

"Send out word in the morning then," I answer coldly, not caring about riots or people scared by assassins who don't come for them or any of theirs, merely their distant superiors. I didn't see any of them rush to help today and it isn't citizen blood that coats the floor, dried to tacky splashes deep and dark.

The medallion flashes from between my hands and I understand now why the symbol is so familiar. How could I not know it, I've seen it so often? Those lines, that shape—it's the Fabool family crest. No wonder he was so relieved I agreed to go… "Cid…" I mutter, clenching my hand around the metal and Beatrix drags me back to matters of the cowering state.

I remember something I read in one of the plays while I was in Tantalus. It was a scribbled note on a script by Lord Avon. I'd thought at the time it was silly, but now I understand it very good. _Turn my blood into ice, for my heart aches from the longing of you…_

* * *

Child gone, wife lost. Who knew Zidane had so much to loose? A clue, but it can't be true, yet the ice in his heart says differently. An enemy hides, but it is uncertain where--within the shadows or plain sight. One in Treno is a kin in like fear. Next: _Case of Fratley--Stagnant Ruin._


	10. Case of Fratley

Note: All characters, places, ect. belong to Square Enix.

Updating a little early, but close enough. And yes, this wasn't the chapter I promised in the last one (I kind of forgot about this chapter! Not good!). Um, think of it as a delightful surprise.

* * *

_Case of Fratley--Stagnant Ruin_

"Fool! Halfwit! Ass!" My lance quickly decapitates the carve spider and it drops to the ground, its many legs twitching in death spasms, brown blood puddling beneath it. I flick my weapon and the same blood flies off its blade, leaving it relatively clean, though I wouldn't eat off it. The heights around Treno are quiet and I look to the ground, ready to pick up her trail again. I growl in frustration for the fight has destroyed the light tracks I was following. Before I know what I'm doing my lance hacks the carve spider's dead body in halves then quarters.

I close my eyes and try to seek some control. It is hard and I grit my teeth with the effort. "Imbecile," I snap and dig my claw into my own hand, bruising skin. It's my fault, all my fault. I do not know when I became so stupid as to let her go alone, but it is a mistake I may die for yet. I have not slept in four days and I believe this may be taking its toll on me. "Cretin!" My lance swiftly slices through the wings of a trick sparrow diving at me from behind. It falls to the ground with a cry and a thud and I snap its neck beneath my foot. Idiot indeed.

"_Fratley! What is the meaning of this?" The king demands and well he should for I've barged into his throne room unannounced, having effectively knocked out those guards and servants that sought to stop me. I must be out of my mind though, for that chilly voice doesn't halt me, nor does the sight of that familiar crown I've always bowed in the presence of before. Instead it incites me and I slide my lance from my back, pointing it at my monarch accusingly._

"_What do you mean I can't look for her?!" I shout angrily, throwing the piece of paper he sent me denying my request to the floor. The king looks at me coldly from his high dais and I know he must be wondering if I've gone insane. "You are needed here," he tells me after a moment, his voice soothing as if he speaks to a child throwing a tantrum and not a Dragon Knight. My grip tightens on my lance. "With Freya…missing that is doubly so," he explains. "Without her loyal Dragon Knights Burmecia is weak."_

"_There are other Dragon Knights and you have the army! How much more strength do you want?!" I shout and he doesn't reply. Before even I know what I'm doing, I march up the steps of the dais, an unforgivable act. My treachery is not done yet as my empty hand grabs the front of my king's robes, pulling him close. "Freya is out there—somewhere—probably hurt and you want me to play maid for your city?!" The accusation in my voice could not drip with more murderous intent. My king flinches and I shove him back into his throne, disgusted._

_I know Burmecia needs me, that the citizens look to me and without my presence here to reassure the country may very well break out into civil war. There is still so much distrust here after the battles five years ago and war heroes are needed to give guidance and calm. I know even better though that Freya has not been right in the head for a long while. I've seen her sheets, watched her flinch away in pain when so much as the back of a chair touches her, heard her growing indifference, endured her lengthening silences. Something is not right with my Freya and in a move of utmost idiocy I suggested we split up. I failed to protect her, if not from herself, at least from the world. I can't fail to bring her back._

"_Release me from my duties," I order, my need to help Freya greater than my need to rebuild Burmecia. This is all my fault, my asinine fault. "Please, let me go," I beg bowing down in submission, though it must seem silly after my threat of physical force. I'm going mad with the need to find her though and I'm torn between violence and pleading. Just let me go to her!_

_My king looks me over and he must think I'm mad. I think I'm mad. I can tell he thinks she's gone, dead, and my hand tightens around my lance as I keep my head lowered. "I remember a different Dragon Knight behaving just the same many years ago over _you_," he says after a time wryly. "You may go Fratley. Just promise me you won't start any wars in your efforts to find her. The last thing Burmecia needs is other countries coming to me for your blood."_

_His words surprise me—I've behaved so traitorously I did not truly expect to be given leave—but I don't look up to let him see. Instead I give a curt nod and stalk out of the throne room that's been closing around me like a prison for the last five years. I don't stop for food, for clothes, for friends; the trip from the castle to the gates takes a good twenty minutes—I make it in five. Out beyond Burmecia's walls Daines-Basin is shrouded in mist and rain that swirls and eddies in a perturbing way. My heart squeezes because somewhere out there among all that murk is Freya; I've already followed her tracks from the fountain square of the main boulevard. All that's left is to find her in the white haze beyond. I don't even care that the metal gates of my city slam behind me._

"What did you say?!" I don't think I've been drunk in many, many years, but I'm drunk now. I think. I can't tell. I think I'm drunk. The man before me edges away, but I don't give him the option of retreating as I lunge across the table and grab his tunic, pulling him down to my face. "You think Burmecia's a joke? Something for you to make fun of, fun of the 'mud rats'?"

The man shakes his head. Two men? Man. "N-no sir!" He tells me and tries to pull away. What he says offends me. I'm not quite sure why, but it makes me angry and I quickly jerk his tunic, smashing his face into the table. "You lying to me?" I demand. That's it, he's lying! Filthy liar!

He looks at me, his eyes half-closed and roving aimlessly, a dark shadow spreading across his face that is blood trapped beneath the skin. He won't answer. I slam his face into the table again. "I said you lying?" I shout and hands grab at me, trying to pull me away, make me let go.

"You picking on Chet, mud rat?" A hippo-man demands getting in my face. He looks just like I feel: unsteady and angry. "You call me a mud rat?" I growl, yanking out of someone's hold and standing up, knocking over the bench I was sitting on as I do; it clatters to the ground. The hippo-man scowls at me. "Yea, yea, mud rat, you got a problem with that?"

I give him my most murderous glare. And then I punch him in the face. He falls to the ground with a thud that shakes the floor. Immediately his friends are on me. Friends or monster companions. I'm not sure. There seems to be twenty of them, but when I kick and punch at some, my blows don't connect. Cowards. They must be running away!

One tries to throw a hook at me; I duck underneath and come up with a punch that knocks his head back so far I hear his neck crack. He doesn't get up and I kick his friend coming up behind me in the groin. He goes down too. Someone jumps on me from behind and wraps a meaty arm around my throat, trying to choke me out. I throw myself back and smash him against the wall, once, twice, three times; he lets go. Someone picks up a bottle and throws it at me. I swerve to the side and grab the lantern off the table; my aim is better and the bottle thrower screams and claps his hands to his eyes.

I hear a roar and a blur of green fur and overalls tackles me, taking me into the table which flips over and deposits the two of us on the floor. I grab the bench I knocked over and slam it into the tackler's face. He flies into the wall. A hand descends with a fork and I block it with the bench. Wait, no, there are two hands. The one I block goes right through the bench in some impossible move and the fork plunges into my shoulder. Pain flares up intensely and I roar, brandishing the bench. The fork wielder stumbles back into a second table, leaving the fork behind in my shoulder.

"Dirty rat!" Someone growls as I return to my feet and a punch connects with the side of my face, making me spin crazily. I think I'm going to puke. "Who's a dirty rat?!" I grab someone's plate of food and smash it on the puncher's head, brown, ropey stuff that might be noodles in sauce dripping down his face. No, it's worms in mud and now the food's insulting me. "Mud rat? Mud rat?!" I slam my fists, one, two, three, four, I'm not counting, into the blinded man's gut and he spits up on me. Disgusting!

"Think you so funny? Think you funny?!" I grab his hair and drag him by it to the window. I throw him through the shutters and there's screams and crashes outside and a splash; he must have gone through the boarding of the deck into the lake. He's not getting away so easily! I begin to climb out the window, but hands grab me, pulling me back in and throwing me to the floor. A wolf man drops on me knees first and I cough, my stomach rebelling as I try to howl at the fire tracing itself up my abdomen.

"Dirty mud rat!" Hands wrap around my throat and bang my head against the floor. I can't breathe! The room's going dark! Air! Air!

There's a scream and the hands let go when I slam my palm into the back of the wolf man's elbow, breaking it. He rolls away and I jump to my feet. The world spins, it must be the world, because I'm surely stable and balanced. Now they're controlling the ground, making it buck beneath me! What spinless tricks they play!

I throw myself at the wolf man and sink my teeth into his ear. He howls louder than I did and collapses to the floor, beating on my back with his one good hand. My feet lash out and connect solidly with his ribs; something gives and he gasps loudly. I stand up as he clutches his chest and a hand turns me around into a punch that knocks me to the floor. My head is splitting. Where am I? I can't seem to focus on anything and feet stomp on my hand, making me scream a curse. That must be me screaming. Is it? I have never sworn before and the oath drives me into a frenzy. All I can think is that I'm lost. I can't find it! Can't find it! What am I looking for?

"Where is it?! Where is it?!" I knock the feet out from under the person stomping on me and they collapse next to me with a sound thud. I leap on top of their prone form and begin to punch everywhere and anywhere with all my might, my weight holding them down and my blows encouraging them not to get up. Someone tries to tackle me again and I lean back, balling up my hand. My fist connects solidly and they go down, crashing into an overturned bench. Someone leaps on me from behind and I throw them over with an expert twist, breaking their arm in the process. Another hand grabs the front of my clothes and draws me up towards a fist. I strike my hand to their throat; they drop me and I resume beating on my target who is trying to scramble away.

"_I thought they'd look well on you." She looks at me slowly and I swear she must think I'm an idiot. In her eyes there is contempt and I have to concur with her. Earrings Iron-Tail? Dainty, delicate red earrings? How could I ever think she would like them?_

"_They're nice," she says, but there's no conviction in her voice. She's humoring my idiocy. She puts the earrings away in a small box. I never see her wear them._

I wake up groaning. My eyes flutter open to bright sunlight that stabs and I flinch, putting my hand in front of my face. My head feels like it's splitting and the rest of my body does not feel much better. I roll over and retch, my body quivering. When I'm done I roll away and groan some more. Why do I feel so bad?

I connect with someone and I squint to see that there are others here with me. Where is here? Here, upon further inspection, is a filthy alley. There seem to be about thirteen of us tossed in a heap back here. The others look as bruised and bloody as I feel; more so in fact. I stand and the motion makes me retch again. When my stomach is empty and I've taken in several shuddering breaths I stagger to the opening of the alley and recognize the streets of lower Treno.

I vaguely remember coming into the town last night after being unable to pick up Freya's trail. I stopped at a tavern for some food. I can't remember what I had, but whatever it was, it's decorating the alley now. One of my eyes throb and I can barely open it. I feel like I've been beaten, but I haven't been beaten in years. A scene flashes through my mind of a woman with a sword and brown hair that ends in curls; the flat of the sword flashes underneath my guard and mockingly delivers a stinging slap to my leg. I shake my head and it throbs even worse. This isn't the first time a picture or words or even names have surfaced momentarily in my head in response to a thought; I've learned to ignore them, bits of memory so small and unconnected as to be useless. To dwell on them would only drive me mad.

My eyes wander and I recognize the front of the tavern I ate at. Slowly more recent memories come back and I vaguely remember getting into a fight. I can't remember why. My clearest memory is of punching repeatedly, over and over, never ending, screaming, "Where is it? Where is it?!". My hand passes over my face as I try to block it out; I've lowered myself to tavern brawls. What a disgrace. The shame makes my shoulders heavy and I can not lift my head. Someone must have tossed the lot of us out into the alley at the soonest possible moment.

I'm not fit to be a Dragon Knight. I can't even win in a tavern brawl, let alone refrain from them in the first place. For whatever pride I can scrounge, yes I did come out with the least amount of damage, but looking at the other drunks back in the alley that isn't saying much. I think I'm falling apart. How could I lower myself to tavern brawls with drunks who don't know what they do?

"You appear akin to shit," a voice says and I glare at the speaker, a petite blonde with a tail. "Shove off," I growl, the pain in my head doing away with all thought of courtesy and chivalry. "Is that the way knights speak to women now a days?" a male voice inquires and I realize the blonde has a friend, a taller man in a brown cloak that covers his form and more particularly his face.

"What have you been doing Iron-Tail?" The woman asks, laying a cool hand on my burning cheek and drawing my attention away from the man who I am bearing my teeth at. The coolness slides across my skin and I sigh slightly, recognizing the feel of a cure spell as my pains lessen and the throbbing in my head diminishes to make me slightly less irritable. I take a closer look at this woman and I recognize her for all that her hair is cut close now and there are dark rings under her eyes. I've only seen her a few times in the past years, but we have always talked about so many interesting aspects of Gaia when we have met that I would not forget her.

"Why are you here Mikoto?" I ask, changing the subject from my actions of late; I do not want to talk about my drunken recklessness in the tavern last night. If she notices I don't answer her question she has the grace not to pursue it. Instead she looks back at the cloaked man who I do not recognize. He nods and she turns back to me; whatever just passed between the two eludes me.

"I was hoping to find Amarant here," she admits and I watch her as a cold hand wraps around my ankle. She raises an eyebrow in question and I give the hand a good kick causing it to retreat back into the shadows of the alley. "Amarant?" I prompt.

"I haven't found him," she explains frowning. I don't find this surprising; from the few words I've exchanged with the man, he prefers his whereabouts to be unknown. "I need your help," she admits after a moment, her face so serious I have to wonder if someone's died. My heart clenches. Not Freya. Not Freya.

"With what?" I feel I should be cautious about this and so I am. My instincts have led me wrong few times. She looks back at her companion and he puts a comforting hand on her shoulder, one she quickly shrugs off.

"Someone's targeting my brother and his friends," she says bluntly. My mind reels and I know it is not the hangover. My hands quickly grab the corner of the tavern, digging into the rotten wood to stay on my feet. "Are you sure?" I demand. It can't be. And I just let Freya go on her own! Idiot!

"Iron-Tail are you well?" She asks and I think she might be concerned, though it is always hard to tell with her. I brush aside her consideration. "Are you sure?" I demand again insistently. She frowns slightly once more, but nods. "Who?" I swear I'll kill the monster if Freya is harmed in anyway! My claws dig into the wood of the tavern and it emits a slight screeching sound. I try to take a breath and calm down, though it is hard. Freya is no amateur knight. She can defend herself just fine when she needs to. At least I hope she can. With the way she has been acting of late, I would not put it past her to die in a fall she easily could have avoided. My head aches furiously and I press it against the dirty, smoke streaked tavern side.

"I can't, explain it, not right now. Iron-Tail, I need you to find my brother and as many of his friends as you can. Tell them to come to the Desert Palace. They need to be there in two weeks." She sounds frustrated, but when I look at her she is as cold as ever. Two weeks? "That is impossible Mikoto. Even if I could track all of them down, there would not be enough time for them to make it to the Desert Palace. It takes nearly two weeks of travel from here to arrive there," I refuse. I don't have time for this. I have to find Freya, doubly so now.

Mikoto slaps me and I wince as her hand connects with a bruise. "Mikoto," her companion says, grabbing her hands before she can hit me again. A tear is trailing down her stoic face and I'm surprised. I have never seen Mikoto upset before and the calm look on her face contradicts the tear and the slap. "Someone's going to get hurt. Some already have been," she tells me and I think of Freya. Is this why you disappeared Freya? Is someone after you? "I know two weeks is ridiculous, but there isn't, much time to spare. Find them, tell them, please?" I have never heard Mikoto ask for anything like this before and this entire conversation is strange. If it weren't for the pain still throbbing in my face from where she slapped me I would think it a dream from bad mead.

I nod. I have to. I will find Freya as I go. She would never forgive me if I let her friends be hurt for her sake. "What will you be doing?" I ask as her companion lets her go and she locks her hands behind her. "Remembering," she says cryptically and the cloaked man leads her away. I watch them go, puzzled. About to turn a corner, she stops and looks back for a moment. "If you find Vivi, tell him, forgive me…"

* * *

Growing questions, rising fear. Fratley realizes there is more at stake here than one woman he holds so dear. Yet his heart twists at the thought of giving up the chase; can he cope with likely bereavement to come? In the heights of the mountains another soul stirs with loss . Next: _Her Hidden Sword Revealed--Revelation of Garnet_.


	11. Revelation of Garnet

Note: All characters, places, ect. belong to Square Enix.

This is the longest chapter I've done so far I think. I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing.

* * *

_Her Hidden Sword Revealed--Revelation of Garnet_

"_Get away!"_

_Rotten, foul… Little hands are clinging to my leg and I put my arms around Cornelia, drawing her to me protectively. __Don't worry little girl of mine; mommy will protect you. Mommy will protect you to the end._

_That smirk, the one I know so well, the one I've seen everyday of my life for the past five years. It isn't him, but it looks so much like him. Zidane! Where are you?_

_A gloved hand is stretching out to us and I flinch, pushing Cornelia behind me. He won't hurt her. I won't let him hurt her! Never!_

"_Don't be that way my Queen. Her death will make everything better. All better." Those lips, those eyes, that face; they're exactly the same! It's not Zidane! I keep telling myself that and it's true, but damn it, why do they have to look so alike? It's tormenting me as I move Cornelia back closer to the throne._

_He shrugs the same exact carefree shrug Zidane gives so often. "If you insist," he tells me and rushes forward, so fast, so fast, just as fast as Zidane! I have no time to retaliate before his kick connects and I fly back to smash into the window, shards of stained glass raining down with me as I fall to the floor. I curl up in pain, knowing from the fire in my stomach that something has ruptured._

_The floor…it's so cold, soothing the burning pain. I could simply drift off, but no. "Cornelia!" I whimper and she looks back at me, fear in her sweet eyes. She reaches for me, but he has her and his blade is tracing lines down her soft flesh. I can see the blood pouring from the cuts down her cheeks as she begins to cry._

"_Let go of her!" The floor bursts into flames as I summon Ifrit's power. This man who looks so much like Zidane, but isn't him drops my daughter to shield himself and she crawls to me. I hold her tightly and she cries into my arms, bleeding on my royal gown, but I don't care. This is my daughter!_

_For the first time in my life, I think I want to do murder. He hurt her. He made her cry. He scared her. He must die._

_The flames are retreating and I can see him there, still standing, unburned, unhurt. "Don't play these games," he growls, walking toward us and I start to summon Shiva. Save us! Save her!_

_His hands are at my throat before I know it. He's so fast! I can't follow his motions as he squeezes and all air is cut off. My fingers pull frantically at his arms, but it's useless. I can feel myself drifting away. It's a struggle to focus._

"_Mommy!" Cornelia wails, beating her little fists on his leg. "Le'go! Le'go!"_

_He smiles viciously at me and drops me harshly. Those eyes say watch; just watch what he does next. I try to tell Cornelia to run, to get away, but my throat won't work and all I can do is give a squeak. I try to reach for her, but my body doesn't respond and I can only quiver in pain._

_He gives me that smile again as he grabs my little girl and that blade is descending, no it's ripping through her flesh and her blood falls across me from the light line he's cut across her small torso to parallel the ones he's already placed upon her face. She screams, unused to the pain, wails and squirms, unsure what to do. That scream sends an urgency through my body I've never felt before and I growl something wordless, pushing up onto my knees, tackling this bastard who would harm my daughter._

_He's surprised and caught unawares; he falls to the floor and my hands go to his face, the need to kill him filling me, scalding me. I've never felt this way before and it makes me strong. He hurt my little girl! Made her bleed! I'll see him hanging from Alexandria's walls!_

_He smacks my hands away angrily, aggressively. I take the opportunity he presents and latch onto his arm, my teeth biting through his flesh until I taste blood. He gives a cry of pain that fills me with some sort of sadistic satisfaction and I want to hear it again, hear him cry the way he's made Cornelia cry and far, far worse. His feet kick out and I let go, gagging as he hits my ruptured insides._

_I fall back on the floor, gasping to breathe, and Cornelia rushes to me as he stands. Her little hands push insistently on me as she sobs. "Mommy, mommy," she cries and I pull her to me, hiding her face in my chest. I want to stroke her hair, tell her not to be scared, but I can see him picking up the sword he dropped when I tackled him. I roll over and shield my daughter with my body. Someone will come and save us, save her!_

_He swings his sword and I squeeze my little girl, hiding her from sight. A small cry falls from my lips with blood when he stabs right through me. Beneath me Cornelia goes limp and I roll over slowly, his sword entering my back up to the hilt as I fall back on it. The pain I feel—so excruciating!—is nothing to the horror that takes over as I see the tip of the blade slip out of her body and my dear, sweet little girl looks at me with pained and vacant eyes._

_Unknown words fill my failing ears and I gasp for air, my lungs not working properly. My vision is blurring, but I still see the dagger he pulls out and feel it press against my throat, begin to slice. Tears slip from my eyes and the world fades away in what must be death. Zidane…_

"Cornelia!"

I jump to my feet and stagger, pain flaring up everywhere. My throat is raw as if I've been screaming and there's a burning fire inside of me that demands my attacker dies. My sight dimly recognizes that I'm no longer in Alexandria Castle. I'm in a forest somewhere and two amber eyes prick at me from the darkness of the trees.

"Cornelia's dead," a voice rasps and a man in black mage clothing steps into view. I throw myself at him.

"Monster! Bastard!" I can barely speak, but I do and I yearn to taste his blood and hear him scream again. I will kill him!

The waltz catches my grasping hands, holding me at bay as I struggle to tear his eyes out. Slowly I stop. That hat…I recognize that hat… "Vivi…?" I whisper in a hoarse, quivering voice that must be mine. Those amber eyes look at me defiantly, as if daring me to comment more, to say what is on my mind when I look at him now.

"You thought she would not recognize you," a voice says with the sound of a smile. I whirl to see a familiar form—I would always recognize the Ragtimer—and instantly regret it as the world lurches uncomfortably. Vivi grunts, but does not let go of my hands, holding them in a crushing grip that makes me wince. "Where is my daughter?" I implore. What he said, it can not be true, it can not!

"Lying dead in a pool of her own blood on the floor of Alexandria Castle," is my answer and all my energy disperses. With no support I fall against my friend and I can not hold back the tears and sobs that rack me. I do not know what I expect—support, sympathy, patience?—but he does not show it, pushing me away roughly and letting me collapse to the cold, damp ground.

"Tears will do nothing," he snarls in a voice I have never heard from him before, angry and biting. Hands wrap around my shoulder and pull me to a strange body, neither warm nor cold. "You cried too," I hear the Ragtimer say in a reminding tone. I don't turn to him, cry on his shoulder as he so apparently offers, but huddle into myself, pulling away slightly from the contact of his strange body.

"I cried and this is what it did for me," Vivi growls, holding out a gnarled, clawed hand for inspection, sharp and deadly, yet so wrong and deformed. The Ragtimer does not speak and Vivi turns to stalk away into the gloom of the trees. "Cry Dagger. Cry till your eyes are empty and you must cry tears of blood. Cry until your heart bursts from the pain," he tells me coldly and disappears into the darkness and mist that blankets the forest.

For a moment there is only silence and my keening sobs. The hands around my shoulders squeeze reassuringly. "He didn't mean it. He is hurt too and you remind him of his wounds," the Ragtimer whispers and slips away, leaving me alone in this forest.

For a long time all I can do is cry. Roars join me, reverberating through the forest and I recognize the voices of Grand Dragons. This must be Popo's Heights for the echo of the roars tells me I am in a range of mountains and Grand Dragons are rare. Somehow the roars quite me; it is not fear, for I long to die. I think it is the strength of those dragon voices. I am not strong, have always needed rescuing, even in that fight, the one that is vividly flashing through my mind, setting my body afire all over again as I relive it, even there I hoped, prayed, for someone else to come, to save…

I can not bear to think of it and blissfully exhaustion overtakes me. I'm slipping away into a darkness so complete the forest seems grey in comparison. I pray I may never wake from this…

"_He's coming through the doors!"_

_Cornelia whimpers and readies the wooden sword Beatrix has been teaching her fighting with. Knights and guards stand between us and the door, Steiner at their front. I pull my daughter back as she moves to join their fighting ranks. I can feel her shiver as we hear screams of defiance, of pain, of death and the sounds of battle beyond the large doors of the throne room which rattle and splinter from an unseen force. She is brave like her father though and moves in front of me, thinking to protect me with her small pretend sword made of simple wood, the blade not even sharp._

_The doors burst open, the edges smoldering and a man walks through them, letting them close behind him as they rebound off the stone walls to slam shut. "Da!" Cornelia cries, dropping her sword to reach out her arms to the man. He smirks in a way so familiar and strides towards her, seemingly oblivious of anything else. "Princess, please stay back," Steiner says quietly and she looks at him in confusion. I grab her hand so she can not rush to the approaching man. This is not her father, this is not my husband. He looks like him, even smiles like him, but it is not him. The way he walks is not Zidane's carefree confidence, but cold brutality. His hands do not reach in return for Cornelia, but drag a bloody sword I recognize as Pluto Knight Kohel's._

_Steiner raises his own sword. "Scoundrel!" He shouts and charges, the others following. Cornelia begins to cry, believing it is her father they attack. "Da, Da!" She shrieks, reaching for him again. I hold her back and stroke her black hair soothingly. "That's not Da little girl of mine. That's not your father," I murmur, hiding her face in my dress and placing my hands over her ears. She is only four years old; blood and screams and battle are not things I want her to dream of later in the night, to plague her, torment her, in her sleep. "That's not your father, that's not him," I continue to tell her and she nods, wrapping her arms around my leg._

_It's not him, it's not him, it's not him… That satisfied smirk is his, that fighting stance is his, that low chuckle is his; it's not him, it's not him, it's not him…Why does he look like him? Why? Why?! It's not him, it's not him, it's not him…Yet it still hurts all the more to see a face that looks like his with a smirk to match as he cuts down our defenders, to see a face that looks like his focus hungry eyes on our daughter, to see a face that _looks just like his_ lean down over me as hands slide a dagger to my throat. It's not him, it's not him, it's not him…_

A hand presses over my mouth and I scream into it, beating my bruised fists against it weakly as I wake. The hand shakes my face viciously and I feel claws biting into my skin. "Quiet," a rough voice snaps and I look up into amber eyes. I fall still and slowly the hand is removed, though the eyes still stare at me menacingly. "Do you think he's going to save you?" Vivi asks and I breathe slowly, recovering from my fright. I do not know what he speaks of and my silence must reveal so for he tells me, "You were calling for Zidane in your sleep."

My breath intakes sharply as he says that name and my eyes go wide. For a moment I feel the shiver of a blade on my throat. "Is there anything left to save?" I ask slowly; the world seems barren, laid to waste. "Your soul," Vivi tells me and my heart jumps. "Do I have a soul?" I ask for I feel only biting acid inside, nothing so beautiful as this word describes. Those amber eyes stare at me from the dark, dark darkness of the forest and quietly, roughly, he tells me, "No."

"Then I should die," I say and let sleep take me again.

_I am crying, awash in tears. My heart hurts and I press a hand against where it lies beneath my skin. She though, she never cries. Sometimes I wish she would, would gather me up in her arms and cry away the pain with me. Does she not care?_

_My father King Alexandros is dead and tonight they are to burn his body and set his ashes to drift in the river that is the moat. The thought that I will never see him again makes me cry all the more, but not her, not my mother. She stands straight as ever, her face solemn and regal. She does not cry, she does not wail and must not bring handkerchiefs where ever she goes._

"_Why don't you cry? Didn't you love him?" I scream when she tells me to stop making a scene. I'm crying so hard I can barely see, but I know her face is still calm and distant. Why, why does nothing affect her? Is she truly the stone queen like they say?_

"_Of course I loved him," she tells me softly and in a what was once common, but is now rare moment, pulls me close. "Of course I loved him dear, always. But the world wants us to suffer and that is why the world took him. Do not play the world's game Garnet. The world would have you cry forever; show the world you are stronger than it!" I nodded, but I still cried._

_She never cried, not once. She did not laugh or sing any longer either, read books to me at night nor ask about my lessons. For a whole year she was always distant and calm, solemn and regal. Then one day she laughed. And it was fake. Forever after it was fake._

I awake to find the Ragtimer holding my arm, wrapping rags around it. The rags are white stained with brown and red. I realize these are strips of my dress and I look away, recognizing dirt and blood.

"Your wounds heal," Ragtimer tells me, efficiently tying off the end of the rag at my wrist. He lets my arm drop and I make no motion to move it when it falls limply to the ground. "It has been three days since your injuries. You heal well considering you were on the brink of death," he continues and I stare out into the gloom of the forest which is slightly lighter than when I spoke to Vivi.

"Why didn't you let me die then?" I ask. "You are sad," he remarks. "Life is tedious," I say with a sigh. "And yet you are still here," he tells me, the sound of a smile in his voice. "So I am," I murmur. "How is that if I was near dead?"

I hear a rustle and glimpse a form among the trees, a form with a hat and wings I now see, something more than the height he has suddenly gained. "The man," Vivi explains angrily and his claws rake a tree, making it weep sap.

"The man," Ragtimer agrees and for a moment there is silence. I think of the man, the man who looks like my husband, but is not my husband. The man.

"The man has done many things," Ragtimer begins, picking up the tale when Vivi does not proceed. Vivi watches coldly and his glare would chill if I were not too tired to do nothing more than breathe and listen. "Wherever he goes is death. He visited Black Mage Village; it no longer stands." Vivi growls and I wonder if he was there.

"Waltz and I have followed the man's trail of death," Ragtimer continues. Waltz? My eyes rest on Vivi who is no longer Vivi. "It led many places and we gained whenever the man stopped to kill. We came to Alexandria after the man. Waltz and I are not welcome in towns; Waltz flew above to find the man and heard the commotion in the castle. He found the window to the throne when it broke and saw the fight through it. He flew through the window and found the man about to slit your throat.

"He set the man on fire, but the man was not harmed. Waltz believes he carries an item that protects against fire. People rushed into the throne room. They shouted at Waltz and drew weapons on him and the man. The man fought them and Waltz took you and retreated to the woods. I met up with Waltz and you and treated your wounds. A monster friend spelled us to Popo's Heights at my request for safety and here we have been since." Ragtimer falls silent and I close my eyes, already so tired.

"You know where the man is?" I hear myself ask. "We follow his trail," Ragtimer explains. So they do not know where the man is. "Do you know who the man is?" I question. "No," Ragtimer tells me and it is strange that here is something he does not know. "Is the man a Genome?" I want to know, for whom else would look so much like my husband, yet not be him?

"It is unknown," Ragtimer answers and I hear leaves crackle as Vivi approaches. He sits next to me and I hear his voice demand, "Do you know something of the man Dagger? Did you recognize him?"

Fear seizes me for a moment, but I push it away. No, no, it wasn't him. "He resembled Zidane," I murmur, drifting off again. I wonder why I do not feel the pains I should feel as sleep begins to take me again. I wonder if perhaps Ragtimer has drugged me to keep me quiet and I wonder if perhaps he is trying to thwart things that would find me in this darkness and kill me.

_No one will listen to me. They call me a liar behind my back. They say I can't stand the thought of my mother having a lover. They snicker to each other that maybe I'm jealous, that I must want him for myself._

_There's a crash and the mirror shatters, pieces of it cutting me. The door to my room bursts open and a maid runs to me. "Princess, are you unhurt?" She wails in distress, looking at the mess of the full length mirror on the floor. She gasps when she sees my bleeding arm and takes it in her hands, lamenting cries escaping her. Others begin to crowd into my doorway to see what the commotion is._

"_I'm fine," I hear myself protest gently and the maids gathering around me clammor that that is not true. They insist that I must see a healer immediately. "Poor, poor Princess!" They fuss. "That mirror was always unstable! I said it should have been replaced a long time ago! Poor, poor Princess!"_

_Suddenly all their voices fall quiet and they stop pushing me towards the door. Instead they part and I see what has caused their silence. He stands there, tilting his head as he looks me over with that amused smile of his that reminds me of a cat regarding a mouse. He performs his perfect, eloquent bow and takes my hand, kissing it. I feel nauseous. "You are hurt Princess. Please, let me heal you. It is the least I can do," he says and his fingers travel up my arm, pushing back the sleeve of my gown. He examines the bare flesh of my wounds and I flinch, feeling burned by his touch._

_The maids gasp and pronounce that I'm so brave, to not cry out and pull away with such deep wounds. In truth the wounds are light; it is his eyes that seem to laugh at me now that I am in his grip and his hands which are not as gentle as they appear, probing the deepest parts of the cuts intimately, that make me flinch and close my eyes. I can't pull away, not in front of all these people. They will ask me when I do not return my arm to him why I insult him so when he only hopes to help; they will whisper among each other that this must be my vindictive punishment to him for being so close with my mother. No one will listen to me then._

"_You are very strong Princess," he tells me as light flashes beneath his touch, my wounds healing under the direction of his magic. His words seem mocking and I long to hit him. I can not though and I only murmur that he is too kind. Finally there is no trace of the cuts and my skin is as unmarked as before, more so in fact, a few fleeting freckles gone. "I am only glad I could be of service," he tells me, bowing over my hand. He stalks around me gracefully, seemingly checking for other wounds, though I feel he means more than that and a shudder runs down my spine. He announces that I am fine now and the maids and those in the doorway thank him as if it had been my life in the balance, not my unmarred complexion._

_He waves away their fawning thanks and makes to depart. Only I notice he whispers in my ear as he passes, his voice smug and teasing. "Afraid I bite Princess?" My breath shudders in my chest and I squeeze my eyes slightly before opening them again. "I thank you greatly for your service Sir Kuja," I tell him and he replies that it was his pleasure. The crowd in the doorway parts for him and he leaves, something to his posture making me cower inside at what it portrays. The maids converge on me and shove the men out, insisting that I must now change my clothes for there is blood on my dress. As the door closes, a flimsy barrier between him and me, I bite my lip ever so lightly. No one will believe me now._

My eyes flutter open and it is hard to tell if I am awake for everything is so dark. Only the sight of those two amber orbs in the darkness assures me that this is no dream. I take in a shuddering breath and my ribs protest, making me cough. After that I breathe shallowly, not wanting to feel the pain.

For a long while there is only silence as all noises are muffled by the unseen forest. Suddenly Vivi asks, his voice lashing out in the darkness, "What is he like?" Somehow there is no question of who 'he' is. Maybe it's the way Vivi says it, his voice sounding as if he's being burned alive, anguished and incensed at the same time.

I don't want to turn my mind back to that afternoon who knows how many days ago anymore. Just the thought makes my insides crawl and I close my eyes again. I think for a moment of going back to sleep, pretending I didn't hear. The Vivi of before would understand my trepidation, the Vivi that used to bring all his children to stay at my castle and tell me everything about them until I loved them as much as my own, he would understand. This new Vivi though, the one who has wings and claws and no longer knows how to be gentle, who snaps and hates with a passion; this Vivi does not care.

"He is very fast…" I begin, remembering how helpless I was in his presence, his attacks unseen until too late. Vivi grunts, unimpressed, but does not tell me to stop. "He knows where to strike most effectively," I continue, remembering how easily he defeated the guards and knights with a few slices of his stolen sword. I feel chilled and the memory is overwhelming me, filling me with horror. "He's so confident, even arrogant and he doesn't pull any of his punches," I murmur, seeing him continue to attack Steiner even when he had my protector collapsed to the ground. "He's…capable of magic and…" For a moment I hear his laugh and he's telling me again, "Her death will make it better. All better". All better…

"I think he's mad," I whisper. Vivi gives a rasping sound like metal against metal and I realize he's laughing. "And you're one to judge?" He demands. He comes to kneel by me and I look up into his amber eyes, the edges smoldering with an unseen fire. "I've heard you talk in your sleep Dagger. The things you say… Perhaps you would like to hear them. Your calls for Zidane, for Brahne. Your talks with Kuja. Your screams against your Eidolons. There is so much fear in your talk all I have to say is a name and your heart pounds," he tells me and it's true, my blood is rushing through my body and I want to curl up and hide.

"Stop," I order, turning away from him. He grabs my arm in his strong, painful grip, claws digging into my soft skin, and pulls me back to him. "Prison Cage," he hisses, naming the first monster I ever encountered and which nearly trapped me in Evil Forest forever. I flinch. "Vivi…," I warn.

He doesn't halt, instead rasping, "Valia Pira," the name of the strange creature that would have kept us locked in the Desert Palace to certain death. "Quiet," I whisper, wishing I could turn away, not look into those eyes that seem to burn into my soul.

"Taharka." I place a hand over my mouth to halt a sound of horror at the name of the creature that tried to kill us in Ispen's Castle when we took the mirrors to open the gateway to Terra. "Not another word," I command softly, biting my lip.

"Invincible." The name of the airship that took my birthplace, both my mothers, orphaned me twice, and haunted my dreams all my life, makes my heart clench painfully. "Shut up!" I shout throwing myself at Vivi, knocking him down. I crouch over him, breathing heavily, my mind racing. "You don't know anything! You're only fourteen! Still a child for all that you have a family! You have no idea how many people I've seen die, how many _things_ have tried to kill me. When I turned five someone poisoned my birthday cake. Don't tell me I have no right to be afraid!" I scream, pinning down his hands to keep him from resuming the painful grips he's become too fond of using on me.

"You don't," he tells me and I screech, mentally pushed beyond any endurance. I slam my knee into his side, a trick Zidane taught me, and he gives a relishing gasp. When he can breathe again he growls, "You have no right to be afraid. Not when we both know you could level any city if you wanted to."

"And kill innocent people?" I demand. "You may be that far gone Vivi, but I'm not." I spit in his face, but he doesn't turn away or even look so much as ashamed. How dare he! He could never understand what I've been through! My daughter is dead and I have dreams of Zidane slitting my throat! I can never trust my Eidolons, not after they were so easily turned to destructive purposes by my own mother and inside I know I might do the same if not watched and kept in check.

I want to scream and rage and hit something, but Vivi offers no resistance, only looks up at me with those unnerving eyes of his. I hang my head, the fight slowly draining out of me. "What am I supposed to do now? What am I supposed to do?" I ask, my voice hitching with sobs I hold back.

"I like it better when you're angry," Vivi tells me in disgust, rising and pushing me away. Instantly my fury comes back and I punch him. My hand connects with the strange, almost liquid frame hidden behind the eternal darkness of his face and he falls back down. I think he is surprised; I have never punched anyone before, only practiced under Zidane's direction on air when I refused to practice on him. My nose is beginning to drip and tears prick at my eyes, but I ignore this to glare at the mage who used to be my friend and is now my tormenter. "Do you want me to say that I will kill the man, Vivi? Is that what you want? That won't bring Cornelia back to me," I snap and he regards me with those eyes that glow again.

"No, it won't bring Cornelia back," he admits in a hiss, "But it will be sweet, sweet and fulfilling. I remember when you attacked me thinking I was the man; there was murderer in your eyes. Do you forgive your daughter's life just like that? Is she not worth his death?"

"She is worth everything! Everything!" I get to my feet and let Vivi up. "Fine. We will kill the man. And when I feed his heart to my Eidolons, you will tell me how much I gain from murder."

Vivi stands and I throw my pendent to him; he catches it, his eyes questioning. I pick up Kohel's bloody sword which apparently made the trip with me. "We have a man to kill and we're a long way from Alexandria to pick up his trail. You'd best soon move," I tell him harshly and he gives that rasping laugh of his, quickly setting into step with me as I make my way through the trees.

I feel hard, hard and cold. Is this how you felt mother, when father passed away? Is this why you didn't cry, didn't comfort? I feel heavy as I walk on my feet for the first time since the attack. There is a human heart here, but it feels immovable, akin to marble. I don't feel the fire I did before at the thought of the man's death. Now I only feel like stone.

"_Why are wars fought Dr. Tot?"_

"_Because people can not, or will not, understand each other Princess."_

"_Zorn and Thorn told me wars are born from hate. Is that true?"_

"…_Sadly yes, ours is a world filled with hate..._

…_it is also a world capable of boundless love Princess, never forget this."_

I hold my breath as I heal my own wounds, one hand to my stomach where the sword pierced me and the other to my throat where the dagger began its deadly work. The healing spell begins to take affect and the pain slowly dies to a droning numbing. When I am done, I gasp for breath, tired, nearly exhausted. I hang my head for a moment and lean back against the tree whose root I sit upon, drawing strength from the silence, no courtiers or noisy guards or insipient nobles.

The Ragtimer sits next to me, facing the other direction. I've quickly found that he is not one to talk as much as I had thought. He is in fact quite shy. Vivi is around me more than him and Vivi prefers to be alone in his own personal hell. No, the Ragtimer is usually off in the forest around us, unseen, but near enough at hand when there is trouble. It is he that insists we stop and eat and drink and that I heal and rest. It is rather like having a nanny and I might laugh if I did not feel so heavy and immovable.

"Vivi was worried about you," he says suddenly. "Is that how he shows his worry nowadays, by goading me to kill?" I murmur. Ragtimer looks at me and it is odd to be surveyed by a person with one eye and that one on a stalk atop their head when I am so used to two.

"You seemed to have lost your strength," he explains. I do not reply, choosing instead to sit quietly and breath deeply, slowly stretching my ribs in a way that pains slightly, but keeps them flexible as they heal. "Now you have found a new strength," the Ragtimer tells me, touching my hand for a moment reassuringly; then he is gone among the trees again and I am alone as I wait for Vivi to return from above the forest with our direction in our hunt for the man who looks like my husband, but is not him. Yes, I have found a new strength and it makes me hard to the world; Mother, is this the strength you found?

* * *

Daughter dead, murderer loose. A new feeling builds in Garnet. The world is inconsequential, narrowed down to one last act to set her free. What will murderer save--queen or stone? In the wasteland others strive to protect from the same Next: _Case of Lani--Stolen Hope_.


	12. Case of Lani

Note: All characters, places, ect. belong to Square Enix.

Yes, this is a very late update on wensday (or early thursday, I don't know), but this is a long chapter for some strange reason I can not comprehend.

Warnings: Again, strong language and less than polite speech.

* * *

_Case of Lani--Stolen Hope_

I used to think I was strong. Then I thought I was weak. I've had so much time to think over the past five years… I don't know if I'm strong or weak, but these things don't matter to me anymore. I never thought that there was so much more beyond gil, work and fleeting pleasure. Now I know. There are things that mean so much more, far, far more, and they have names and personalities and…_Amarant, Eiko, where are you?_

"Shit!"

"Are you always so crude?" If glares could skin and quarter, I swear this snob of a rat would be trailing his innards like a scarf right about now. The ground shakes beneath me and caves in, trapping me in my distraction, making me a prime target for the blue wolf that wastes no time in bearing down on me. "Fucking screw you Iron-Tail!" I snarl, moving the large blade of my axe to block those cruel, sharp claws reaching for me. Shit, I'm so fucking screwed. I close my eyes in a wince, already anticipating impact, pain, whatever.

"I'm going to overlook that," the rat says calmly in a lecturing voice as if I'm a five year old brat and I hear a yelp and a growl along with the swipe of a blade. Looking, I see him standing in front of me, spear keeping that monstrous traitor of a wolf at bay. For the moment anyways.

I pull myself out of the earth and realize my leg is bleeding. Great. Just fucking great. It's nothing heavy, just scrapes, but still, it pisses me off. It took me forever to make these damn stockings! "Need assistance?" the rat asks, dodging and countering another swipe by the wolf. That's right. He asked ME if I need HIS help. Excuse me, but WHO here is the master bounty hunter?

"No, I don't need help," I growl and the side of my axe slams into the wolf who has gotten past the rat's guard, sending the damn creature flying back several feet. "In fact, I think YOU are the one who needs MY help. Rat." I don't know why, but somehow he pushes my temper, dissolving all the tranquility I've built up in the past five years in Madain Sari. In one week I've gone from a passable, upright, possible-maybe citizen to a woman with murder on the mind and plenty of creative ways to do it.

"Suit yourself Lani," he tells me in his snobby, I-am-so-much-better-than-a-street-slut-like-you voice. He thinks he's so much better than me! If we weren't fighting for our lives here, I'd pound his face into the dirt and ask him who's dirty now! Fucking bastard. I hope his mother beat him hard and often as a child.

The wolf senses my anger, or maybe he just has a thing for women—I wouldn't be surprised, I've been groped by a Mandrake before—and leaps as the ground begins to shift again, stone shooting up in pillars for the damn creature to climb. Does this never end? I would die to admit it to the rat—to Iron-Tail—but it has been a long time since I did more with my axe than ward off the odd goblin and such and generally the goblins these days are my friends. This is a tough fight and it's been dragging on for a good while now. I don't think I'm up to this stuff anymore. I can't remember when, but somewhere along the way I turned into an innocent, and isn't that just pathetic? Lani the once feared, or at least highly employed and competent, bounty huntress is loosing her stamina in a battle for her life. Well shit. Maybe I shouldn't have gotten up this morning when I found myself spooning the rat. That's as bad an omen as I ever saw one.

Damn him. This is all Amarant's fault. When I get my hands on him he's going to be lucky to be walking on stubs!

"_Where could he have gone?" It's the fourth time I've said this in the past five minutes, the twentieth in the last ten and the hundredth in the last half hour. I can't stop pacing. I need to do something! Move! Physical action always helps me calm down, keep my cool. Oh fuck; I squeeze my eyes shut as I press my knuckles into them. Where has Amarant gone? He's not in the single room of this miserable hut that I share with the moogles anymore!_

_I stop and stare out the door to the kitchen that overlooks the sea. At first when I came here, the sea drove me crazy. Then I slowly became used to it. Finally I ignored it. Now, now I stare at it for hours in wonder at so much water. It's so…calming… No! No! Don't think about the sea Lani!_

_I start pacing again. And then it hits me, like a stab in the back, of which I've done many in my time. He went after Eiko. After she beat the crap out of him. I know he said she was tranced; does he think something's wrong? Of all the times to be a touchy, feely, caring, dutiful, arrogant, loner, bastard!_

_All it takes is a moment to grab my axe and rush out of the house for the entrance of the village. I'm a little hurt that he didn't think to at least tell me, think that maybe I might be worried about Eiko who I write letters in my belabored, crappy handwriting all the time, corresponding through Mognet. Eiko who sends me more edible items than the scratch around here so I don't half starve or die of fish. Eiko who always stays up late and talks girl chit chat with me every time she visits and braids my hair and let's me tell her stories before she goes to sleep for fun even though she's eleven now and far, far too old for such kiddy stuff; apparently I'm not supposed to care that she just stormed off after getting a unicorn to nearly rip out his guts. Oh, no, Lani doesn't have a heart, Lani doesn't actually CARE about other people despite the fact she houses them, clothes them when they need it, gives them food out of her meager supply of human edible items, tends their wounds and sicknesses when they do stupid stuff in the wasteland like don't protect against the sun because they're too badass for hats! Lani doesn't care one whit about anything! Why should she be asked to come along? Bastard._

_I'm going to fucking kill him myself._

"_Lani!" A furry hand pulls on my dirty one and I look down to see Momatose. Over the past five years me and Momatose have become real good friends. Looking around to make sure no one's watching –wouldn't want the moogles to think I was sentimental or some thing like that—I sweep Momatose up in a big hug that the moogle awkwardly returns. When I set him back down, he brushes his fur straight before holding something out to me. I take it, surprised. It's a...kupo nut. "For the road," Momatose explains and I press my lips together to hold back a grin. I pocket the nut and start off again, but he tugs on my hand one more time. "Lani, we'll be waiting for you."_

"Ah!" I roll to the side and a mouth of very, very, oh shit so very, sharp teeth catches my hat instead of my throat and proceeds to tear it to shreds; I made that damn hat! Then again, better my hat than my throat… I pull myself to my feet, breathing hard, trying to hold up this heavy axe of mine. What's the matter with me? I used to be able to do this in my sleep!

Iron-Tail falls back to stand with me as the wolf circles us slowly, having learned some respect for our weapons, though from the look in the creature's eyes, not much. "Are you well?" He asks, glancing at me. I want to tell him to shove off, he sounds smug, but I don't have the breath so I just give a small growl. It's not like he's not sweating either and he's got a scratch on his arm. Okay, so it's little compared to all the bruises and scrapes I have, but those are from dodging and the hard ground; I haven't had the pleasure of feeling those sharp claws, or even worse, those pointy teeth, yet.

The wolf races at Iron-Tail, but slips underneath the rat's slash to circle around to me. I put my axe between the two of us and it isn't deterred by the shield of metal. I give a great chop, but I'm tired and the swing doesn't go where I want it, instead biting into the ground a few inches to the left. Bad term. Digging into the ground a few inches to my left. If anything is biting, it's the wolf that's jumped on me in the open moment, claws scratching into my shoulders as it knocks me over. It's mouth draws close to my face and I see it's jaws unhinge, ready to eat me alive.

Okay, I've been trying to stay calm, but now is definitely a moment to panic. "Fenrir stop!" I find myself shrieking, my arms a pathetic, pitiful shield between me and the Eidolon. It's going to bite any second now and I'm going to either die or be a cripple for the rest of my life. I'm clenching my teeth on my lip in anticipation of the pain, but the only pain that comes is the one to my sense of smell as the creature halts and pants in my face, pausing to consider me. I see recognition in its eyes.

And then Iron-Tail's spear stabs into its side deeply, splattering me with blood even as the action gets the big, blue wolf off me. The rat grabs me, pulling me to my feet and touching my shoulders, my throat, my face, my chest, as I stand there in a daze. Wait, touching my chest. "Pervert!" I give him a punch that knocks him to the ground, one that I doubt he's ever felt before and isn't likely to forget for a good, good while. "What the hell are you doing?!" Okay, yes, I've known many...less than admirable in their sexual practices people, so really, this shouldn't be such a big deal. So maybe he was feeling me up…in the middle of a battle—he must have odd kinks—for our lives…it's not like I'm not practically on display here anyways. Still… "Pervert!"

Iron-Tail gets up rubbing his cheek and wincing as the Eidolon staggers to its own feet, in far more pain considering the fact it just rolled its side into the dirt; if it weren't trying to kill me, I'd wince in sympathy for the feel of grit in wounds. "I was checking for bites and scratches," the rat tells me acidly and I glare at him, holding up a fist. "You want another punch?" I threaten and damn, did that first punch feel good for me, talk about a stress reliever! He glares right back and doesn't answer, tightening his grip on his spear instead. I feel so much better now! Maybe I should punch him more often… I heft my axe up easily and turn to look at Fenrir who's looking ready to make another attack.

"Where's Eiko?" I shout and it shakes its head, giving a quiet snort. "We want to help!" I inform the Eidolon, but just like with Carbuncle and Phoenix, this seems to drive it over the edge and it lunges at me. This time I'm ready as the bait and roll to the side as Iron-Tail impales the monster. It gives a howl and breaks apart into blue dust that flies away on the light wind. Flies away to Eiko. I watch Fenrir leave and I know that up ahead is Eiko and with her is Madeen and shit, we're probably going to have to fight the two of them…I don't even know why!

"Are you going to sit there all day?" Iron-Tail drawls and I think of hitting him again. I can't stand this rat! Maybe we got off on the wrong foot to begin with, but by this time I know we will never, ever, in any possible, conceivable, miraculous way, be friends. I wish I hadn't agreed to his proposal. Jackass.

_There's blood on the ground. From the feel of it—dried, hard, flaky—it's old, at least by two days I'd say, probably more than that. Still, it's there, it's a sign; I'm getting closer. I just hope I can catch him before he bleeds to death. Why don't you rest you big bastard? You just keep plodding on and on; what trouble is there you're not telling me about?_

_There are steps and I quickly hide, masking myself in the earth, lying in a dip of land between a bush and a medium sized rock, large enough to cover my scrawny figure. The almost continuous dusk of this part of the world helps too, though it is beginning to get lighter with the rising of the sun, something hard to see, yet becoming steadily more noticeable. It is like this, trying to be as much apart of the dirt as possible, that I watch the person who has been tailing me for some time now approach. Following Amarant's trail, I've seen them doggedly pursuing me in the distance several times. I've erased my trail as I've gone along, but that hasn't seemed to stop them; I've been wary to erase Amarant's trail in case I need to back track and this is probably how they've caught up so quickly. My gut clenches a little with nerves at the thought that someone's following me. All I can wonder is why? I've done so much…but that's all five years and more ago. Why now?_

_The figure shuffles into view cautiously and I recognize it as a Burmecian with pointy ears and form that always lies about its capabilities, looking like it might break easily in two like a twig, yet in reality capable of bruising power and frustrating agility. The Burmecian stops too far away me to make out any details more than the beige color of their clothes. They kneel down and touch the ground. Their head jerks up and looks in my direction; I try to melt into the dirt, holding my breath, slightly nervous after five years of "retirement"._

_The Burmecian stands up, ramrod straight and I watch wearily to see what they'll do; is this a bounty hunter after my own head? Maybe it's someone with a vendetta; I've had dreams lately, waking up in a cold sweat, still half- feeling vengeful blades twist in my chest as I lay in bed and try to calm my ragged breath, still my frantic heart before it bursts from fear and imagined pain. I have nightmares about my past catching up and ripping me apart. They say everything you do returns threefold; if so, I'm screwed. There's no way in hell I can get out of all those dirty deeds with only a little scrape on the knee and some harsh words._

_Without warning the Burmecian jumps and damn, this one must be a Dragon Knight. I crane my head, trying to find them in the sky, but it's a futile effort with this damn sun making me nearly blind. When the icy edge of a blade lightly rests against the back of my neck, I know I don't have to worry about finding them anymore._

"_Who are you?" A male voice asks sharply as I freeze, one slight movement in the wrong direction more than enough to slice my neck open. "My name is Elani," I say slowly, "Who are you?"_

_The blade presses ever so slightly. "You're lying," that voice says and something about it sounds familiar. It's not the first time I've been told I'm lying in such a way, hard, accusing, yet somehow detached while still leaving no question about the sharp interest involved. It may have been five years since I'd had any large contact with the greater world, but I've a memory like a sponge, absorbing every little detail and never letting it go. Every word, every smell, every touch, ever detail right down to whether someone's brushed their teeth or left them grimy and disgusting; it's all in my head, whether I want it or not—like my many nights of drunken revelry—organized like a mental library._

"_Eight summers ago, Treno; I stole your purse and you chased me all over town until we both ended up grappling on a roof and falling in the lake. Lucky for me you couldn't swim," I say and there's a sharp intake of breath. "You know me?" That cultured, Burmecian voice demands, a slight, uncharacteristic tremor running underneath._

_The blade at the back of my neck is becoming really annoying; it's hard to lie as still as a corpse especially when I have to eat dirt every time I talk. Without warning my hand reaches back at an impossible angle and forces the weapon—a spear by the feel—into the dirt besides my head, me rolling over quick as a man having eaten laxatives on his way to the nearest outhouse. I leap to my feet, axe at the ready, arrogant smirk firmly in tact; few ever suspect I'm double jointed._

_Facing my stalker, I stop, placing a face with a name. "Fratley Iron-Tail," I voice, surprised that he isn't protecting his beloved Burmecia. He pulls his spear up to stand at rest, nearly as ramrod straight as him. "We've met?" He asks, frowning, any hint of a good mood in his face a trick by my brain not wanting to be looked at with such vehemence. You'd think I'd said Freya was my bitch by the way he's glaring. "Who are you?" He demands, his lips barely moving from their grimace._

"_Lani," I say carelessly; what's the big deal about a name? From his complete non-reaction, I'd say he doesn't remember me. Well, that's his problem, not mine. "Why are you stalking me?" I shoot back in return, though not lowering my weapon because while Dragon Knight's holding their spears at rest may look like they're actually at rest, it only means you won't be expecting the blow when they leap at you._

"_I mean to join Eiko," he says icily, lowering the hot temperatures of the wastelands by ten degrees. "Well I'm following Amarant who's following Eiko and when we all meet up and I slap the crap out of both of them, I'll tell her you said hi," I tell him with a cocky grin. He can just take a hike into the nearest antlion pit._

"_I need to talk with Eiko about important matters," he informs me, looking at me in the way nobles look at peasants; as if I'm an offending pile of crap left on his front step. "Tell me and I'll tell her. Eiko's busy." Eiko doesn't need to talk to jerks like him. Besides, it'll probably be hard enough to calm both her and Amarant down without this prick making things worse._

_For a while it's a staring contest of glares between us, neither willing to back off. Me, I don't want him anywhere near Eiko and Amarant, getting in the way. He, I think he's just following his innate instincts of the natural born jackass. Either way, it all comes down to an arm wrestle. We find a good rock, relatively flat, and set to it. Immediately I have the upper hand; Dragon Knights have stronger leg muscles than arm muscles, though they can still pack a nasty punch, don't even get into their vicious stabs with those spears. Still, I wield a very large, very heavy axe as if it's a feather duster, though I do admit I tend to adopt a defensive stance behind it, letting it rest close to the ground. I've also been landing giant fish nearly twice my weight for the past five years. He's screwed._

_As we fight for control, he begins to look thoughtful. Wow, who knew he could think. It doesn't even look as much of a challenge for him as it must be! "We both have the same goal in mind: finding Eiko. It's ridiculous to keep trailing each other," He says, voice strained slightly._

"_You're the one stalking me," I point out as I exhale. We begin to move back towards our starting position. "And you're stalking Amarant," he retorts. "I have a reason!" I snarl. "Well so do I."_

_When I don't say anything he continues, "If we travel together, we're more likely to find them sooner and less likely to run into trouble."_

"_What are you getting at?" I demand, though I've gotten the point. I just want to hear him say it. My hand begins to edge toward the rock, his pushing down strongly. "Travel with me to find them," he grunts, straining visibly slightly. I think about it. He is a good fighter, hell, he's renowned everywhere. I'm just one ex-bounty hunter with bad dreams and Eiko might still be trance crazy, or whatever made her attack Amarant, when the three of us—after we find the big, red haired bastard—catch up with her._

"_Fine. But I get to keep any valuables we find. And you get second shift on night watches," I inform him, the conditions mostly because I feel like being a bitch and making him grovel slightly after his little display earlier; I don't appreciate having sharp metal tickling the back of my neck anymore than the next person. "Alright," he agrees after a moment and I smirk. The muscles in my arm flex and his hand slams against the rock; brat's play. Standing up from the crouching position I'd assumed for the low rock, I stretch and grab my axe while he rubs his hand inconspicuously._

"_Let's get going. You've already wasted enough our time," I tell him and pick up Amarant's trail again, not bothering to wait for him. "And I wasn't lying when I said Elani was my name you know. There's a thing called a nickname." I think he's thoroughly humbled._

A bread knife spears me, puncturing my lung, and blood begins to drip from my mouth as incredible pain flares, me staring into the face of a woman twisted in justified hatred, the widow of a man I killed seven years ago for a tidy sum of money along with his five year, six month and two day old son, chieftain of—hands slam into my chest and I cough, eyes flying open in waking. I can't breath. Again these hands slam into my chest, forcing air out and stimulating my throbbing lungs. I begin to cough in a long steady stream until finally I can breath. For a long while I lie there gasping, just breathing in ragged breaths.

A hand touches the corner of my mouth and as it draws away I see blood on its claws, visible in the moonlight. Iron-Tail's face swims into my vision, blurring and contorting, changing into many different things before back into the Burmecian's. My chest rises and falls painfully and I stare past him up into the starry night sky.

"Are you sick?" He asks me and I think there's something like concern on his face. How can he be concerned? We hate each other. He saved me too…

"I'm fine," I rasp, gaze beginning to wander, become distant, staring at nothing and everything at the same time as I focus on breathing. In, out, in and it hurts so much like, like a blade through my chest, and out, out with a faint gasp that makes my eyes widen in pain. "You bled, you nearly suffocated. That's not fine," he tells me and my eyes flick towards him before turning back to staring at nothing. He does have a look of concern on his face. Why's he so damn nice?

"Dammit, I'm fine," I manage, trying to sit up to prove it and giving a sharp cry as the muscles in my chest flex. I flop back down and the impact brings tears to my eyes that spill slowly from the corners down the sides of my face. "Are you sick?" He asks again and I wish he would just let it go. "I'm not sick already, sheesh," I snap hoarsely, but don't try to get up again. "Is it time to move out?" We need to cover as much ground as fast as possible, meaning scant hours of sleep when we can still track at night by moonlight.

"You were twitching in your sleep. I thought you were having a seizure," he says instead of answering and I close my eyes in annoyance. Why can't he drop it? "I'm fine, forget it," I growl. "You cried out and clutched at your chest," he continues, ignoring my order and touches a spot on my chest where my left lung rests right underneath. I give a sharp gasp at the touch, feeling bruised and beaten in the tortured spot, and he tells me, "Like that you did."

For a moment there is silence. I hope he's given up on the subject, but then he says, "What were you dreaming about?" and I close my eyes for a second. I have a very good memory, even with dreams; the whole thing is laid out in detail in my mind and my stomach feels queasy at it. "I was dreaming about this woman," I start, hardly believing I'm going to tell him, but it seems the only way to make him shut up. "This woman whose…family I killed. I remember her face when she came home. I used to watch to see how people reacted after I finished a bounty; I found it funny. It's not so funny now."

I'm a monster. When I die they'll have to burn my body so it doesn't taint the ground. I wish I could at least say it was a fun trip like I used to, but I can't, not anymore. I see their faces in my dreams and they want my blood.

"What about the woman?" Iron-Tail asks, not damning, but not forgiving either. "She stabbed me," I say and softly, so softly, lay a hand over the spot, "She wants revenge, so she stabbed me. They all do."

"All?" He questions and I sigh. "Yes, each friend and cousin and sibling, mother, father, neighbor, child; I've taken away people loved and they want me to feel all the pain they suffered," I tell him as I begin to drift off again. At least the dreams, more like nightmares, don't come every time I sleep, or I would never sleep, which is an impossibility—unless you're dead.

"Has anyone ever come after you?" He wants to know, interrupting my stupor. "No…" I murmur. "Then I think it's all in your head Lani," he tells me and I stare up at him from failing eyes. "It is all in my head Iron-Tail; that's the problem."

_I stare down at the small cove, if it can even be called that, of Madain Sari, sitting on the edge of an overlooking ledge of land, dangling my legs above it. I want to cry, but I won't. I want to scream, but that would give me away. I can't look like it actually hurt me, like it really mattered. It's not that I think I'm some big, tough person, it's just that I simply can't. It would be…hypocritical._

_I've never really loved anyone before, not my parents, my Granny, even the few boyfriends I've had. None of that was ever love. Not like this. They were just conveniences._

_These days though there are people, people who had to worm their way into my withered heart like maggots to a carcass. Moogles mostly, but Amarant and Eiko too, along with Stiltzkin. I don't know how they did it, but they did, and now I'm paying the interest._

_Atla, sweet Atla who makes the best omelettes, when we have eggs, who likes to braid my hair for me every night before I go to sleep so it won't be a tangled mess in the morning. That Atla. She's dead._

_I should have gone with her when she went to search the shore for shellfish, but I didn't. I should have, but I didn't. I was too busy laboring to write to Eiko to take twenty minutes and go look for clams and muscles with her. And now she's dead because I wasn't there to stop the monster that attacked her._

_I used to watch the heartache on peoples faces when they found the loved ones I'd killed for money. At first it was morbid fascination; I did that? I put that look on their face, as if their heart was going to break? Then I began to find it funny; it was a big laugh to see them look that way over my bounties. I didn't get it, didn't understand that love can hurt._

_Now I do._

_This night the dreams start. I see my ma, my ma who liked to touch the bottle a little too much and couldn't cook worth a damn, but who kept me safe from the pedophiles and made sure I was fed. She's sad and she's angry and she's focusing these things on me. I'm covered in blood, my father's blood, my first victim's blood. My pa was a man who put clothes on my back and made sure I always limped out of the house, even as he protected me from the strangers who would abuse me. My ma always used to remind me when he hit me, "He keeps this house and keeps you clothed, Elani. I don't see you working for your share."_

_I saw the bounty on his head once though and one day he hit me one too many. It was my first murder, messy and nerve racking. I didn't even know what to do with the body afterwards. Still, I had the money and he'd never smack me again._

_My ma cuts my throat and I'm covered in my pa's blood. Now I understand her pain._

"So your first real hunt was a guy wanted for low scale counterfeiting?" Iron-Tail asks and I laugh, choking for a moment on the apple I'm slowly devouring from our combined rations. "Shit, the look on his face when I told him there was a bounty out for him and I was going to arrest him! You would have thought I'd said I was going to torture him with red hot pokers and make a rug out of him!" I guffaw, feeling light and fancy free.

"What'd he do?" Iron-Tail prompts, seeming genuinely interested and this really brings tears of too much, too hard laughing to my eyes at the thought. "He tried to bribe me with his fake money, the dumb ass! And then he tried to run away, only he forgot two things: first, we were on a two story roof and secondly, his pants were still down from taking a shit before I got there."

Iron-Tail groans slightly at my use of language, but he gives a small chuckle still. I think I'm starting to figure him out. He's like, a gentleman, sort of. He's still an ass, but on a more fancy level than the asses I'm used to. It's actually kind of cute, though still annoying as all hell. He hates it when I swear. Once you get past his total prick outside though, he's actually sort of fun. Sort of. He'd be a lot more fun if he'd drink, but every time I pull out the alcohol he looks like a group for prohibition is coming to collect his soul. My guess is he's had a drinking problem. Didn't anyone ever teach him that the best way to solve things is to confront them?

"What was your first official Dragon Knight mission? Story for a story!" I command imperiously, though I probably sound more like the Lady of the Gutter Trash than the Queen to him. He frowns as we continue walking, following Amarant and Eiko's joined trails. When he frowns, it's really heavy, like the world's putting bricks back on him till he can barely stand anymore. I don't get it; it must be a "duty" thing. I've never really cared for "duty".

"I don't remember," he says and I give him a funny look; he's joking, right? He's shaking his head though and looking kind of depressed and here we were actually having some fun. "Six years ago I set out to travel the world," he says. I remember traveling the world my first time; it was exciting, except I had to fend off thieves and some particularly determined scumbags. I kind of doubt he had the same problems; Iron-Tail has this sense about him that just screams, "Don't fuck with me or you'll be leaving behind a limb". I wish I had that, be particularly useful when I try to bargain with the dwarves at Conde Petie and lower their ridiculous prices for my broke self.

"So what was the world like? A total bitch right? All smooth curves and nasty teeth." Yes, I say a few things that are derogatory for my sex, but then, the bounty hunting profession is mostly a male business and only other bounty hunters don't see a female huntress as a slut pulling an attitude.

"I don't remember," Iron-Tail finishes and I choke slightly. "What?" I demand. How could he not remember? Was he tripping on drugs or something the entire journey? He probably was wasted the whole time. That must be why he doesn't like alcohol.

"Something happened. I think…I think I got into a fight…with something…it's something of a haze, but…I don't remember anything beyond five years ago," He tells me and fuck, he's telling the truth. I soften a little. Poor guy. I once got so wasted I didn't remember what the hell I did, but the way everyone hinted about it later, I've always regretted not remembering. So that's not exactly the same thing, it's the attempt at empathy that counts right?

"That's harsh," I murmur and he shrugs. "It's not that bad," he tells me, "It's frustrating sometimes when everyone expects me to know, remember something, that just isn't there in my head, but otherwise, I really don't mind. I can always make new, better memories."

I shake my head; what a strong guy. I'm a little sorry I told him he was a jackass the other day. "Well now I guess we know each other's dark secrets. I dream of homicidal strangers and you, you're just one quart short of a gallon Fratley," I tell him, giving him a hardy pat on the shoulder and he glares at me, even as he winces slightly at the strong touch. "Who's one quart short of a gallon? You're the one convincing yourself into seizures!" He snaps irritably, a gleam in his eyes that looks mischievous to my trained eye; oh poor Burmecia, I think I've corrupted your goody-two-shoes knight and soiled his pedestal. I think that's a fine day's work.

"Hey, at least I can travel the world without getting amnesia! What an amateaur!" I tell him and point my nose up into the air, flicking my hair over my shoulder in my best imitation of stuck up wench. Not that it's really all that hard.

"Ah, but who almost gotten eaten by Fenrir if not for a lucky moment of brain damage on its part?" He asks, striding ahead of me, his back more level than a ruler. Damn he's so…..prim.

"Hey, what the hell, wait up! I'm an invalid!" I shout after him when he doesn't slow down at a moment. He makes a disbelieving noise and starts to walk faster, almost trotting. Jerk!

I run after him and before he knows it, I leap up and throw my arms around his neck, my legs twining around his waist. "Off!" He orders and I tighten my grip. "Piggy back ride!" I shout, grinning and he stops. "No, no, no, you're too heavy!" He tells me and I thump his shoulder, making him wince slightly. "Are you saying I'm fat?" I demand angrily and he sighs. Maybe he realizes that if he keeps talking, he's going to get another punch. And I know that last and first one was enough to make an avoidance of it happening again.

"Fine, don't get off," he says and flops down onto his back, crushing me. I scream and pull off his hat, which makes him demand it back, so I throw it away like a disc and he glares at me. I don't know why, but for some reason he feels kind of like this little brother I had for a few years, at least until he died from a disease my family couldn't afford a cure from a healer for. I think he kind of feels that way too, because he hasn't pointed his spear at me since the other night when he woke me up from my nightmare. Or maybe he just thinks I'm crazy and pities me. I don't care. I'm hot, bored and I admit it, homesick for Madain Sari and my friends. Besides, if something doesn't take my mind off Amarant bleeding his guts out somewhere, somewhere, and Eiko—

"Eiko…" I whisper, staring, disbelieving, even as I push Fratley off me so I can roll over for a better view. It has to be an illusion from heat or something. It can't be. She looks like Eiko, but she's also so different. She looks cold, like ice, ice that gives you freezing burns when you touch it. She's not tranced anymore, but something's wrong. Very wrong. My skin begins to break out in goosebumps. I feel slightly nauseous. Something is so very wrong.

Fratley turns and freezes as he sees her too. And I know he's thinking the same thing as me. _She's going to kill us_. Slowly, gracefully, in a way that isn't Eiko, that is someone, something, else, she raises her flute to her lips and plays an angelic melody I've never heard before.

And then the world bursts into white flames as the stone of the ground breaks up and flies away, leaving us out in the open where Madeen can see us easily, hiding in the ghostly mist rising from the tortured ground. A giant lion, a giant, I don't know, but it's giant and it's Eidolon and it's reaching, reaching, reaching down to tear me apart.

I scream because, oh fucking shit, I'm going to die and I know there's no point in fighting this, this Eidolon. I don't want to die, I want to go back, go back to Madain Sari, go back to Momatose. The last time we talked, I didn't even say, didn't even say, how much I care. I'm going to die and I wait to feel those big claws tear into me, squish and smear me like bug guts on the broken ground.

And then Fratley's there, tiny, insignificant spear deflecting those reaching claws, making them withdraw. "Lani, get up!" He tells me and I nod dimly. Got to get up. Got to fight. Oh I wish I had a religion to pray to, because how can I fight this giant, giant thing? Carbuncle, Phoenix, Fenrir, fine, but Madeen? Madeen who surpasses the other three in everything from sharp teeth to giantness to magic?

"Eiko, Eiko!" I shout and she just stares, waiting, waiting for Madeen to devour us. Where the hell's Amarant? What the hell happened to us being friends? I don't know, I don't know, I don't know.

Madeen tosses Fratley aside like one of my old ragdolls and now it's coming for me again, because I'm easy prey. Get the weakling, the one frozen with fear, stuck to the ground as if glued, out of the way first. I've done that before too, dispatched the easy ones first so I could concentrate on the tougher fights. Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit… I'm not Amarant or Zidane or Eiko or their friends; I don't face down the impossible and save the world. I'm not some hero who can do anything. I'm just a defeated woman, defeated by her own self, who likes to live with a bunch of moogles.

Something flashes and imbeds itself in Madeen's cheek, making it roar in agitation as four other flying blades follow closely behind. "Fuck it, move!" A rough voice growls and I immediately roll away as Madeen's foot comes down where I was a moment ago, close to having made me flat like those fish that hide in the sand, flounders or something. I leap to my feet and back up to where Fratley is kneeling, clutching his arm which is beginning to swell a little. A form lumbers up to us and I glance back at it. Bastard. Damn fucking bastard!

Amarant looks at Fratley, I think anyways, it's hard to tell when he keeps his hair all over like that, before turning back to Madeen who still looks really, really, really, damn really, dangerous. How are we going to defeat this thing? I turn to Amarant, but he's not facing me straight on, in his stupid "I'm such a loner" pose. Fratley is my next choice, but he's looking a little cross-eyed and he looks helpless in the face of this massive monster. Damn men. Why do I have to do all the work? This is sexist if I ever saw it; assholes.

"Fratley, jump. Get at Madeen's head, shoulders, face, eyes," I tell him and nods after pausing to stare at me and this insane logic streaming from my mouth. "Amarant, go after the throat, vitals, calves," I continue, trying to think of what I would do if this wasn't an Eidolon, just a really, really, really, really fucking big guy. Powered up on drugs. That's right, I'm just busting another trouble causing druggie. This isn't a fight against supernatural forces. Just plain old people. Hairy people. With sharp, fanged teeth. Shit.

I pull my axe from my back and start off towards Madeen. "What are you doing?" Fratley asks, not getting it. "I'm going to be the distraction," I tell him and walk right up to the scariest thing I have ever seen and I have seen a lot of scary things.

"You don't scare me Madeen! Now, are we going to talk, or are you going to throw a big hissy fit like the other Eidolons?" I shout and Madeen stops in the middle of raising a big, clawed hand to crush me. I don't know what the fuck I'm saying, but I add for good measure, "Bitch." Fucking shit; I'm trash talking to an Eidolon. I'm screwed.

Madeen roars and leaps at me, hand swiping, claws outstretched to gut. I drop to the ground like I'm on fire. The Eidolon misses by a mere inch and as soon as I can I glance back over my shoulder; Amarant and Fratley are gone.

"Your aim sucks!" I yell, making an obscene gesture and Madeen moves as it's going to leap at me. Suddenly it screams, a sound like rock crashing against rock, throwing back its head, and I see Fratley there with his spear, point down and buried in fur. Madeen swats at Fratley, but he's already gone, dropping down the Eidolon's back, spear slicing all the way.

Just as the giant creature reaches for Fratley again, I see one of Amarant's wing edge's slice deeply into the back of its legs; he always does keep those things razor sharp. Madeen crashes to the ground and I jump back, out of the way. Things aren't over yet though and holy light begins to blind. I know what this is. I know what this is and there is absolutely no defense against it. Fratley and Amarant are backing away, getting out of range. I should too, should be running scared. But I'm not. I know how to stop it.

"Kupo?" I ask and hold out the kupo nut Momatose gave me. It's crazy, crazy, insane. But Madeen stops, stares, and then I think, I think it…smiles. It takes the nut—I knew I kept that for a reason, it wasn't out of pathetic home sickness!—and…fades away. All that's left is Eiko who frowns at me, seizing me up.

"Eiko…what's up?" I question and it's a stupid thing to say, but hey, I never said I was smart. Just… Oh damn it all. I march right up to that little girl and smother her in my body, hugging her until she can't breath. I'm not sentimental. I am not. But this calls for a hug. Even I know that much. It's not sentimental, mushy crap I'm doing.

"Eiko, Eiko, Eiko, isn't it way past your bedtime?" I demand with a slight grin. Maybe I'm just coming off the high of facing a giant Eidolon that could squish me with its pinky. Fratley and Amarant are staying back still, as if afraid she'll bite. I glare at them, giving them a silent order to get their asses over here NOW. They obey. I like this sudden following in them. It's refreshing. People should do what I say more often.

"Stop," Eiko says, her voice muffled by my chest and I let her up for air. She looks at me and for a moment her eyes waver and I think I see two, no, dozens, thousands, of people in them, but then no, it's only Eiko behind those eyes. "Why are you running around like a madwoman, making everyone have to chase your sorry ass?" I demand. I figure since her parents aren't here and I don't plan on telling them about this little escapade, that I better lecture her like a responsible adult, rub the lesson in or something. I don't even know what the hell the lesson is. Don't go crazy and run off. Yea. Something like that.

"It's all gone," she tells me, her face haunted. "I'm the last remnant of Madain…" She looks so lost and lonely. "Oh that's not true. There's Madain Sari and Queen Garnet," I tell her, but she shakes her head. "Madain Sari is a graveyard and Garnet...belongs to Alexandria. All alone," she insists.

"We're here, your friends are here, you're not alone," Fratley corrects suddenly, the first thing he's said. Amarant just grunts. Pig.

"I'm going to bring it back," Eiko tells us and that sounds more like the Eiko I know. "We'll help, anything," I tell her, volunteering the men whether they want to or not. I give them a look that says, "Disagree with me and die". They don't say anything on the subject, though Amarant starts to look even more moody than usual.

Then Fratley changes the subject and all my happy, giddy feelings drain away and I forget all about upbraiding Eiko for attacking us, for running away, for causing so much trouble, as he tells us that someone's out to kill her, her and Amarant. Two people I love. Daggers sink into my heart. Everything comes back threefold they say…oh…no…

* * *

Eiko found, happiness crushed. Lani is certain Fratley's words spell loss. Eiko's actions still unclear, how can she aid the young summoner and Amarant face these new threats? Another feels the edge of helplessness. Next: _Cracks in His Armor--Fall of Steiner_. 


	13. Fall of Steiner

Note: All characters, places, ect. belong to Square Enix.

Another late Wensday update, but it is an update, that's good! These chapters aren't getting really any shorter. I go back and look at the first chapter and then I look at this chapter and I wonder when the heck it all got so long! Enough about me whining, I'm not interesting. I hope this is a, uh, "good" Steiner problem. And for the sake of verification, there are eight Pluto Knights: Weimar, Haagen, Kohel, Breireicht, Laudo, Mullenkedheim, Dojebon and Blutzen : and no, those are their actual names if anyone remembers, I did not make them up for certain, because a few of them are way to hard to remember the spelling of (who names their child Mullenkedheim?).

* * *

_Cracks In His Armor--Fall of Steiner_

_I can't get up. My body won't move. Why won't it move?! I have to get up, have to move, have to STOP HIM. But my body won't move. I feel the pain, the fire in my ribs, the biting coldness in my arm, the taught burns on my face, the blood draining from my temple. Have to get up, have to move, have to DO SOMETHING. But I can't. I can't, I can't, I can't. My body has abandoned me in this time of Alexandria's need._

_A foot slams into my stomach, hard and swift, the armor cracked and useless from an earlier attack. I gag as that foot rolls me over and I look up into his eyes. They are the eyes of more than a murderer; they are the eyes of revenge and they take pleasure in my pain. There is laughter and I am kicked again, taking all breath away, leaving me unable to even cry in pain, thanks be for that._

_He kneels down and whispers confidentially to me, "I'm going to kill them Steiner. I'm going to kill them and gut them and adorn this castle with them. And they're going to cry and scream." He glances back at them and I follow his gaze to the Queen and the Princess, my two charges, my duty, my life. "Maybe they'll beg, maybe they'll even call out for you. What do you think? Wouldn't that be nice? 'Protect us Steiner. Save us!' Isn't that your **job** Captain?" Quick, I don't even see it coming, he punches me and I spit out blood as I cut my tongue on my own teeth. I don't make a sound, don't answer his ludicrous talk. He punches me again and there's no reason or need for it as his attacks slam into my battered body, he just likes it, likes that he has me defeated, at his mercy, likes that he has the power, the control, has me helpless before him._

"_Stop!" My Queen yells, I would know her voice always, and a wooden sword rebounds off his back, clattering to the floor, useless. Why did she speak? Why did she draw his attention back to her? Better that he kill me and she and the Princess escape. But she's never been like that, one to sacrifice others, never. I wish she would, just this once. Please just leave, escape, be safe._

_It's not that way though because he's standing now and I can only cling weakly to his ankle. I can't rise, can't fight, can't cut him down; I can only make him smirk and give me one more kick for trying to hold him back so pathetically. "I'll make it a show for you," he chuckles, "Try not to die before it's over."_

_And then he's leaving, walking away, walking towards them and I can't move, can't get up, can't do anything. I can't stop him._

"Steiner." Beatrix looks so stern, though the limp soup she's offering me is anything, but. "Eat. I shouldn't even have to tell you this. If I have to, I will feed you like a toddler."

I turn away. _Failure._ I can't eat. _You can't do anything._ Any food I swallow always comes back up. "Steiner," Beatrix snaps and she's so angry, I've made her angry. _Incompetent._ If I can't eat, I can't eat.

I remember when I first truly woke up in the infirmary. A healer was bending over me, pressing a cloth that must have been cold, but seemed to radiate heat like the desert sun, to my brow. "So you're finally awake," The healer had said, "You've suffered a fever the last three days."

Three days. Three days of fever, of not waking, yet not sleeping, a world of my own. Hearing laughter, feeling blows, enduring pain and magic and humiliating words. A world where I finally found the true me. _Dog. Worthless._

Beatrix came to see me immediately, embraced me, loved me; she shouldn't have. _Bastard._ I think it was a mistake when she married me. _You drag her down._ She'd told me to sleep, rest, get strong again. _Weak._

"Steiner! Stop ignoring me," Beatrix growls, her patience running thin. She only ever lets her perfection, her legendary general exterior, slip with me, reveals the human beneath only ever to me. She's a person, beautiful, strong, everything. Just everything. _Disgrace._ It is a sorry thing that her name is linked with mine.

She looks angry, upset; she should, she should yell at me. No one has yelled at me, demanded an explanation, told me that I was a screw-up, an oaf, a useless excuse for a fighter. All I've heard is "You did your best Captain". No one ever finishes the remark, tells me that my best was far from good enough. _Failure._ How did I ever make it so high in the ranks? I should never have made it beyond page, running errands no one else was low enough to do.

Beatrix throws the tray of food the healers gave her for me to the floor, the bowl breaking, the soup leaking down between the small cracks of the stone. The tray clatters and quivers with a metallic clang. "It wasn't your damn fault! I couldn't stop him either," she almost screams, but softly, quietly, so no one hears besides the two of us. I don't answer. What can I say? She's wrong. So wrong. _Wretch._

She stares at me, waits for me to reply, but I don't. There's nothing to say. No lies can cover the truth. I failed. I didn't even die to stop him. I despise myself for it. Everyone should, must. If suicide were not an act against my fealty I would do so, just to remove my stain from Alexandria.

She knows this. She would do it too if it had been her there, watching him torment them, force Princess Cornelia and Queen Garnet to agonize over the coming end, playing with them, parrying attacks with a smirk, taunting. I had been there, had seen it, and I did not stop it. _Bastard._

She knows this and she tells me, takes my hand with the fingers broken, splinted and bandaged, useless, worthless, "Stay alive. Wake up. Alexandria still needs you." And then she kisses me lightly and leaves. She shouldn't do that. Shouldn't kiss me, shouldn't touch me, shouldn't come see me; I'm diseased, foul. _You're good for nothing._

I remember what the healers told me. Four cracked ribs, broken arm, broken fingers, broken nose, ruptured intestines, fractured shin, twisted ankle, numerous bruises, cuts, burns, pulled shoulder, black eyes both, two lost teeth, blood pooled under my skin and trapped to form dark shadows in dozens of places, specifically my face. Without a lot of magic and potions I would have died. Should have died. I was savable though. So they saved me. They shouldn't have bothered.

When I was a squire, I was so promising. There was always something off, wrong, about me though. I did everything right, by the code, exact. But it just wasn't true somehow. When I became a knight, something still didn't fit. It never did and it never will. I'm worthless.

_It's dark. We've set up camp for the night on some plain in the middle of nowhere. It's not my turn for watch, but I can't sleep, so I might as well stand guard for Princess Garnet. Standing outside, I stare at the shadows beyond the weak firelight that could hide any number of enemies._

_Ever since I followed Her Highness from Alexandria, determined to protect her, to see her returned home safely…I've felt like the world has been slowly slipping out of balance. A princess who refuses to act like a conventional princess, a Queen whose reasoning is unclear, a world where my country is the enemy and my sword is left with no honorable paths, but those deemed "traitorous" by one multitude or another. All I can do is protect the Princess, protect Alexandria's future, follow my duty like the tin knight I am, strength with a tethered heart._

_I swore an oath and I live by a code. Yet neither rights the sky and ground anymore these days. I want to stop this madness, bring the world back into balance, reclaim peace; but I can't. Not alone. My Pluto Knights would gladly help, but I hesitate to take them down any path that might bring them under the heading of "traitor" too. Where do I stand?_

_I can't tell. All I know is I stand with the Princess. Where she goes, I will follow, and try to keep her on a sound path. Someone has to lead this madness, be the guiding light, but someone also has to beat down the path, make the journey possible. All I can do is clear the way to the future of as many dangers as possible. I wish I could do more._

"Did…she say anything?" Zidane asks. He visits every night, pacing and glaring at the red moon seeable through the window. I can understand that. I was with….her…last. He wasn't, can't forgive it, so he tries to take my account and live the moment himself. It's only when he's still, when he doesn't move, that you can tell there's something more to this nightly ordeal of his. I know he doesn't sleep; I don't blame him.

I think back, not because I want to, but because he asks. As a king I don't have much respect for him, but he's still my king. As a man…I give him more credit than I ever let him know. It's for the man and not the king I bring my mind back to those last, fleeting moments of consciousness when I lay with blood spilling from my mouth and pain flaring everywhere, like ice and fire battling it out for my soon to be corpse. I remember, remember the assassin drawing that dagger, holding it to her skin, beginning to cut. I remember that she smiled, smiled and said one thing. Just a name. Probably because they both look so much alike and her mind had already begun to shut down, to mix the two in reality and dreams. I look at Zidane and I think of the assassin and they're not so very different these days. Zidane has the same light in his eyes, but it's somewhat altered, colder and harsher. Where the assassin took actual pleasure in his acts, Zidane is following a means to an end. What that end is no one knows, but him, if even he knows.

"The Queen called for you," I tell him and he nods, stilling his motion for a moment. He always asks, every night, what she said last. Every night. And he always stops, always looks a little colder, a little less...like a person…and he always says her name, says it like he's asking for forgiveness and death at the same time. I can understand that. I'd do the same, but I don't deserve it. _You don't deserve anything._

"Dagger…" He murmurs and his hand clenches on the windowsill, his body rigid in the moonlight. It's only when he's quiet, when he doesn't pace and move about, that you can tell something is wrong with him, just like now. He isn't himself, isn't annoyingly optimistic and cocky, all the things that used to make me so reluctant to trust him. It's like he's dead already and this is just a bad actor.

"They'll regret this," he says suddenly, starting to pace again, round and round, making enough motions for the two of us. "They won't get away with this," he adds and I wonder who 'they' are. Does he even know who hired the assassin?

I heard some guards talking earlier, but it had seemed too ridiculous. Maybe it's true though. Maybe he does think it was Lindblum. Maybe he is quietly raising up the troops and gathering together the airships to attack his home country. It's insane. I might have yelled at him before, but not now. What right do I have to try and affect the world? _Disgrace._ I'd probably make things worse. Better to not even bother. Safer. _If you hadn't been there, she would have run; if you hadn't gotten hurt, she wouldn't have tried to help._

"One week, in one week we're going to attack," Zidane tells me suddenly, looking at me, watching me. He expects a fight, just as surely as every official has been presenting him with. I only shrug. _Don't even try, don't spread your failure_. If he attacks, he attacks; I can't stop him, can't help him.

Zidane seems to settle slightly at this. He continues on, detailing his plans, his knowledge of Lindblum, its weakest and strongest points, where the assault will begin. I wonder about the people. What did they do? But he seems to think they should share in their rulers' fates, if not having been directly involved, for not stopping the Regent and his lady. It's madness, but it's methodical, logical. I couldn't plan an attack on Lindblum better myself.

Finally he talks himself out. All I do is listen. What's the point in saying anything? All I have is one question, but it doesn't seem to matter in the picture he paints. When he finishes, there will be some sort of end. I wonder what Alexandria's end will be after his rule. I can't formulate it. I can barely comprehend these times now. The world is slipping away again, just like that time five years ago, but this time, I don't have any light to cling to. _Worthless._

The darkness is lessening. Zidane stares at the sky as the red moon begins to disappear. And then he looks at me. "I'll make them pay Steiner. For everything. You don't have to do anything, but I want you to know, they won't escape," he tells me in that new, strange way of his, cold and hard. I'm not sure if he's trying to be comforting or if he's making threats. Or maybe he's simply stating the facts as he perceives them. It's impossible to tell what Zidane thinks anymore. Does it matter?

_I can't see a thing, momentarily blinded by my own blood dripping into my eyes. My helmet's gone, cut in two, I'm surprised it wasn't my head. There's not time to think about that though, about the fact that my armor is slowly being torn away, part by part, broken and melted into a useless piece of junk. I know it squeaks a little, but armor's not for silence, it's for protection, as I've pointed out many times to Zidane, Amarant and Eiko, not that the scoundrels listen to a thing I say. Still, it's more than just protection, it's **my** armor; it's practically my skin, would be if flesh and metal could meld together._

_My left pauldron's a hunk of scrap on the floor ten feet away, I had to discard my gloves after were frozen, breaking into multitudes of shards when I tossed them aside, and I'm going to be digging the chain links of my coif out of my scalp for hours after this is all over. That doesn't really matter though, none of it does. Except that as my armor is torn away, so am I. My hands ache with near frostbite, my shoulder feels inflamed and there seems no end to the blood running down my face, matting my short hair and slicking my the coils of my mail._

_There isn't much time to think about these things though, much time to feel and hiss in pain, take care not to aggravate my wounds. There isn't much time for anything, but wearily raising my sword with muscles that scream at the effort, blocking his strike with one of my own knight's swords, my own knight! I remember this villain jumping Kohel, dropping upon him from above and twisting his arm at an angle it should not have been able to arrive at in any healthy capacity. I don't know if Kohel's merely unconscious on the staircase leading to the throne room, or breathed his last minutes ago._

_It's a struggle to hold a strong front and I angle my blade, bringing it slicing down upon the assassin's fingers holding his stolen sword, something loyal tainted by his touch. He blocks my attack though and now we're hilt to hilt, body to body and all my strength is bearing down. Surely I have him now, but no, he's changing, growing, and I find myself staring in a face very different from the assassin's, one I've seldom thought to look at, but know all the same._

_I'm staring at myself and the other me is not pleased. "Vagabond," he snarls and I desperately disengage from the force bearing down on me. "You let them die!"_

_It's all I can do to save myself from being impaled on my own Excalibur II. I turn, circle my opponent, try to understand this strange development. Those words bite at me though and I find my energy fleeting._

"_Scum! You'd just give up and pity yourself?!" This other me demands and I want to shake my head no, deny it fervently. But I think it's true. I have just given up. It's all I can do. Excalibur II lashes out again and I scramble out of the way._

"_Have you no pride?! No honor?! Worse than a scoundrel, a coward!" He yells and it's my face screaming, berating, each insult given with an attack meant to cripple and wound. It's so hard to keep dodging; I can't even begin to contemplate an offensive maneuver. My breath is ragged, coming short, and this other me seems even more disgusted._

_Biting steel sinks into my heart, pinning me to the wall, as my agility fails and I know what it's like to be speared by my own sword. By some perverted twist of reality, I find myself still alive to agonize as my opponent leans in, glaring, to snarl, "Worthless vermin."_

"You uh, think you're going to be better soon, Captain Steiner, sir?"

"Shut it Dojebon—! Now you just take your time Captain Steiner, we've got everything under control! Everything safe and sound round here!"

Along with my breakfast this morning—which I haven't bothered touching—came the Pluto Knights, or most of them. Kohel is still being treated, but I've been assured he'll live to fight and flirt with the castle guards again.

"You sure you don't want to eat something Captain Steiner?" Breireicht asks. He's the oldest of the knights, older than me and he's the most sensible. Of course, he's also prone to being the most carefree, not one to get worked up too much over even important things. "I ate already. Someone brought me something earlier," I murmur, a blatant lie, but they don't know. They don't know I haven't eaten a thing in the past two days, barely slept at all after Zidane left last night, dreamed of…

They exchange glances that I don't understand. "You sure you're feeling alright Captain? You don't sound like your usual self," Haagen asks slowly, as if expecting a tirade. "Yes, I'm alright," I say and they look at each other again. I don't understand this look. They act as if there's a problem, at least a problem they haven't been aware of for a long time already. _Failure._

"So uh…you think you're going to be better soon, Captain Steiner?" Dojebon questions again and Laudo gives him a quick punch in the shoulder. For some reason they don't want to talk about my health. Good. I don't want to talk about it either. _Useless._

"Ow, it was just a question Laudo!" Dojebon snaps and it looks like he's going to hit his fellow knight back. Then the fight goes out of him, which is strange with Dojebon, a young man full of a lot of energy and emotion.

For a moment there is silence. It's an awkward silence and I hope they leave soon. My plan is to stay in this bed until I simply rot away and all these visitors I keep getting, making me move, talk, be alive, are ruining this plan. Normally I would yell, order them all out, to stop besieging me with their nattering, but it doesn't really seem to matter anymore. Nothing really seems to matter. _You don't matter._

"The uh King gave us marching orders for the attack on Lindblum," Blutzen says suddenly and I can tell from the way the others look at him, Mullenkedheim's glare specifically, he wasn't supposed to tell me this. Vaguely, in the most distant corners of my soul, what he says irritates me just slightly. Zidane gave orders to my Pluto Knights? He didn't talk to me about sending them on his preposterous, vengeful hunt.

Now I understand why the knights are so subdued; they're nervous. They need someone to lead them, bark orders, give them a clear path to march down. Zidane isn't that kind of person. He suggests things and just goes off and does whatever he damn well wants. You either follow or you don't; he's not going to force you. He never did get that's not how it works with the military, that it's not all about choices and democracy.

"Where did he station you?" I hear myself ask distantly. Do I really care?

"Front lines. We're part of the first wave," Weimar murmurs, now that everything's out in the open. They were joking a bit earlier, but they're not even trying now. Everything's just silent. They're waiting for me to say something, tell them what to do maybe. All I can think is that the first wave of invading forces is the one that suffers the most casualties. The Pluto Knights need someone to direct them. There's Beatrix, she'll take care of them…she has to worry about the army as a whole though. Zidane, Zidane would…leave everyone to find Cid and Hilda and exact whatever revenge it is he means to do to them.

Something inside twitches. Who's going to look out for the Pluto Knights? They're strong fighters, but they need someone to direct them.

The first wave is like a death sentence.

"_You'll let them die!" It's an accusation, but it's also a fact. The force of Excalibur II clashing with its twin I hold numbs my fingers gripping the hilt. "Worse than a rogue! At least they do right by their companions!"_

_Metal clashes with Metal and it's all I can do to hold my own. "I knew you for a blindly obedient fool, but never a cur!" I stumble and a gauntleted fist connects with the side of my face, sending me to my knees as the destroyed throne room, my prison, my hell, my enlightenment, spins around me. Only deeply ingrained reflexes save me from the chop that would separate my head from my shoulders, chain mail or not._

"_That's not true," I mumble. The other me sneers. "Don't lie," He barks and I flinch. In an instant Excalibur II pierces my chest and rips me open, my ruined armor scant protection. "Wretch," he spits, "Don't try to fool yourself."_

"When are you going to get up?!"

Beatrix paces to and fro and it reminds me of Zidane, back and forth, round and round. Her hands clench into fists as she whirls to face me. "You can't stay in bed forever Steiner!"

That's what she thinks. When I don't answer she starts moving again, angrily, a dark look on her beautiful face that embodies all the things I've aspired to be for so much of my life. Courage, loyalty, honor, justice… _Failure._

"That attack is in five days! Are you going to sit here while Zidane leads this kingdom in another massacre? You taught me better than that, about not just following orders blindly!" She shouts and I can tell she's been thinking about this for a while as she continues to vent.

"Why don't you do something about it?" I ask. Why do I need to do something? She's far more capable than me. _You're capable of nothing, nothing, but incompetence._ She knows how to handle things on her own. She doesn't need me. No one needs me. Not even I need me.

"He won't listen to me! He'll listen to you though," she insists, slamming her body into the chair placed by my bed for visitors, fingers gripping the edge of the seat so hard her knuckles are turning white. "You're his friend, you fought Kuja together. He trusts you. I nearly killed him several times. He's forgiven me, but…he doesn't trust me like he does you. Talk to him Steiner? Stop this?"

I stare at my hands, so strange without my gloves. There's actual flesh, pink and softer than metal, laced with veins and bruises along with bandages and splints. "He assigned my Pluto Knights to the first wave," I say, not sure why I'm telling her. She probably already knows and I probably don't care.

Her punch catches me unawares, slamming into the side of my face, vaguely reminiscent of my fleeting dreams. She stands and she's so mad she's quivering with it. I've never seen her so emotional, but she has been stressed lately. "You let him do that to your men? Don't they mean **anything** to you?" She demands and her voice is shaking slightly.

I think about telling her how I found out, about the nervousness among the knights, the need for someone to lead them. But I don't. There's a new bruise layering upon the old ones on my face and I can't seem to care. The woman I love must hate me and all I can think is that this is how it should be. She should despise me. I never deserved her love and my feelings for her only demean her. I'm glad she hit me. Finally, someone did, someone really expressed their feelings for me instead of trying to comfort me, telling me it wasn't my fault.

"You're just going to sit there and let him do that," she states after a long silence. "You're not going to do a thing. Just sit there and sulk…"

Suddenly she grabs my shoulders, strong hands biting into my wounds, and shakes me like she would a rag doll, something hard for most people to do to someone of my mass, but which she manages easily. "You stupid, stupid—Steiner! Please get up! I can't fight this insanity alone!" She yells and it sounds more like a threat than a plea.

When I don't respond she storms out of the room, slamming the door behind her. I should have told her how I can't help anyone.

"_Aren't you going to save them 'Captain' Steiner?" I'm not sure if it's the other me or the assassin speaking, but does it really matter anymore? We both as much killed Garnet and Cornelia. I killed my Queen and my Princess._

"_Don't feel too bad about it. You're only a worthless relic. Who needs knights anymore? Let them die." A dagger nearly punches a hole through my stomach and I move aside barely in time. I feel like I'm drowning. I almost drowned once; drowning in full armor isn't pleasant. The water drags you down and you know you have no hope of escaping—you weigh too much to possibly swim to the surface. You're death knell is already ringing before you stop breathing._

"_Coward. You'd let them die too!" And now I'm fighting off two attackers at once and I feel like I'm far outclassed and I am. I parry and the dagger slips under my guard to score a cut against my exposed ribs._

"_You don't have to save them 'Captain'. It's only your **job**, nothing important. Since when do you ever get your duty right anyways?" One is laughing and the other is cursing me as they back me against a wall. I'm drowning in this ruined throne room where there's royal blood on the floor, blood of a woman and a girl, both ones I've watched over since young, tender ages, watched grow and assume personalities of their own and do amazing things._

_There's more than that though. There's Queen Brahne and King Alexandros, failures before failures. There's the princess whose place Garnet took and there's this whole, long line of failures marching before my eyes. I couldn't stop the war from happening five years ago, couldn't stop the wrongful attacks of my country, couldn't stop the creation of beings meant only to kill, couldn't stop so many things and now all these people have these things hanging over them because I couldn't. Couldn't move when he killed Cornelia. Couldn't make Garnet run when he attacked. Couldn't keep him from getting to the throne room in the first place._

_There are so many things I simply couldn't do and when two blades submerge themselves in my chest, it seems hardly fair repayment to all those people who counted on me._

"You assigned the Pluto Knights to your attack on Lindblum."

It's night and Zidane is back, ever moving, ever agitated. He stops though and looks at me, a look that murderers with its coldness. "Are you going to fight me too Steiner?"

"…No."

* * *

Broken knight, haunting past. Steiner isn't sure how to face up to the present any longer. Friends and companions urge him to take up sword once more, but he finds himself unsure. Others also feel this uncertainty and wonder when the world became engulfed in this insanity. Next: _Case of Cid and Hilda--Broken Realm._


	14. Case of Cid and Hilda

Note: All characters, places, ect. belong to Square Enix.

Does it look like I'm running out of characters for chapters here? I just knocked off two from the list with this one.

* * *

_Case of Cid and Hilda--Broken Realm_

_My name is Cid:_  
There's a sort of calm insanity to the moment, not like the moment before the storm, but the moment when your airship fails, you've tried every conceivable way to fix her, keep her flying, but that's it, she's dead, dead in the air and you're falling, going to crash into the ground, die in a mangled wreckage and you know this and you just think "Damn, I wish I wasn't such a cranky bastard this morning to everyone before I left".

There's a calm insanity like that now as I stare out over the mountains towards distant Alexandria, the source of the coming chaos, the calamitous wave poised to crash over Lindblum. It's insane, it's ridiculous, but it's true. It's true that the husband of my niece, one of my best friend's despite his young age, is going to attack my country in two days, storm over these craggy walls and sack this beloved city. Normally I would say Lindblum would withstand easily, never fall again, but there are things that move in the misty shadows outside our walls, things that should have been dead a long time ago, but bred in the darkness, increasing, multiplying into a great host of foulness. These things are waiting, waiting for the attack, and when Zidane strikes…they will overwhelm the city.

It's true that my great-niece is dead and my adopted daughter missing. It's true that my allies from that time five years ago are scattered, lost. It's true that no one knows whether my niece lives or walks among the haunted ranks of the dead. And it's true that Zidane in his rage will conquer my city and rip my heart from my living body to satisfy his anger. All these things and more are so true and all I can think is: when did the madness begin?

_My name is Hilda:_  
All I know is this: the world has gone insane.

_Regent of Lindblum:_  
I pace and pace and pace, but it doesn't make the ugly, detestable, vile truth go away. Zidane is coming to kill me and my wife. He is coming, he is coming, **he is coming**. Coming to do murder and subject my country to a punishment for a crime it never committed. I try to talk with him, send ambassadors, letters, anything, but he won't answer, won't listen. He's coming to kill us all and I don't understand it.

They say my niece is dead, that Garnet Til Alexandros XVII is dead. This can't be true, this can't be real. They say I sent an assassin after her, wanted her head. It doesn't follow an ounce of logic. Why would I? Why **would** I? I promised her father I'd protect her. I fought beside her in the war five years ago. I held her little girl, my grand-niece, and I felt proud, proud because life does go on and Garnet knew the truth of this.

They say my grand-niece is dead, they say I killed her too. The little girl named Cornelia who I've only seen four times, was soon to see a fifth for her fifth birthday on this world. They say I sent someone to murder her in cold blood. They say little child's blood, my own family's blood, coats my distant hands and that I either weep because my plot was found out or am crazy.

My daughter is missing, somewhere in the world alone. Black Mage Village is a smoldering pile of ashes; its inhabitants are gone: Vivi, Mikoto, Mr. 288, the black mages, the genomes : all gone, all maybe dead. Freya has disappeared and they say Fratley has gone mad looking for her, threatening his king and running off into the wild waving his spear. No one knows where Amarant is, has not seen him for months, Quina has been lost among the many marshes of the Qu and if Steiner lives or breathes things can not be well for him, for he would never allow any of this to happen.

I want to rage and yell and shout "What the hell is going on", but I can't because I'm in charge and acting like that would bring down this little house of cards that is Lindblum's government. So instead I pace, pace and think, try to see how I can stop this, try to figure out the way through this situation. But I can't. I can't see anything except Zidane's angry face as he draws his daggers, ready to kill me mercilessly, and I shouldn't even **be** able to imagine this because he's my friend, but I can, I can and I can feel it too, little stabbing pains where he'll cut me, torment me, finally take my life.

A throat clears and I look up, pull out of my internal world of despair, to see Artania, my most trusted minister and one of my closest friends. Even when I was an oglop, later a frog, all through my own foolishness, he stayed by my side and did his best to keep things from falling apart while my little bug mind wandered, unable to focus on one thing for more than five minutes. He looks a little contrite now, which is strange for Artania who is usually so confident, never regretful like he seems now, a little nervous, his eyes not meeting mine, more so sidling off to stare at the walls, the ceiling, anything else.

"What is it?" I ask gently, coaxing him to speak, something I usually don't have to do, and he finally meets my eyes, his resolve firming. "Lady Hilda requests that she be permitted to scout outside the city walls," he tells me and my heart freezes. My Hilda, my wife, out there where it's so dangerous, where…**things** play hide-and-seek in the mist that blankets the world, thick and dense? No. No, no, no, no no no nonononono, NO.

"I forbid it," I tell him swiftly, harshly, because this is simply crazy. I know she wants to help, wants to do something, but this is crazy and I won't let her. I won't. She can help **here**, **inside** these walls. Other people can venture forth into the plains surrounding Lindblum. Other people would willingly do so, people who are not my **wife**.

Artania puts a hand to his mouth and clears his throat again. "I'm afraid she's…already left," he tells me and the fear builds quickly so that I have to sit down on my mockery of a throne, a symbol of power when I have no power, this icon of control when all control is fleeting and my wife is out among the shadows and my friend is coming to kill me and my daughter is missing, my niece and grand-niece are dead and **the world has gone insane**. By Ramuh, the world has become deranged.

_Lady of Lindblum:_  
The guilt kills me, impales me again and again, and it's all I can do to not clutch at my weak little heart and cry because Eiko's gone and she might be dead and if she is it's all my fault because I drove her away. Drove her away to run among the dangerous wild where things prey on the small and devour the young. I know, I know, I **know** she can take care of herself, I know, but things aren't the same, aren't the **same** and who knows what stalks her out there, wants to eat her flesh and chew her bones. It could be anything from a Fang to a Behemoth and I **worry** because I'm her mother and that's what I do, but it's more than that because I never had a daughter, can't have children, am barren as the wastelands and she's everything I could have wanted and so much more, so much more that she's half my heart, the half that speaks its mind and yells and shouts rude things and acts anyway except the way a lady is supposed to act, but that's alright because she's smart and sensible and precious and all the things she needs to be to survive.

I shouldn't have yelled at her so much, tried to cram the silly intricacies of nobility into her head so hard, should have just let her be a child, have fun, not sit at boring lessons from eight in the morning till four in the afternoon, far too much time spent on studying history, etiquette, diplomacy, dance, writing, singing, anything and everything a princess is supposed to know because she's not a princess, not some little doll of politics like I was when I was young, but a girl, a girl who's used to running and laughing and being the king of tomboys. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry that I bleed it.

Maybe that's why I decided to do this, as some form of penitence. Or maybe I just need to be busy, to not be able to think about things like this. Or maybe I just did this because it's right and I'm the Lady of Lindblum whose duty is also to protect the city to the chilling end, just like her lord's. I am the Lady of Lindblum whose hands are far from clean, despite their lily white hue and tender softness.

"Lady Hilda," Erin, one of my husband's most trusted airship pilots and my dear friend, murmurs, having come along with me on this mad mission that might very surely kill us both and the three red mages, colleagues of mine, accompanying us. I nod, though the motion is hard to see in all this mist that dampens the world, milk and oil come together in the shape of dense clouds. Sounds filter through this mist, eerie and omnipresent.

There are things that move out here, things with claws and teeth and I am hard put to name them all. Fangs and Mus, yes, but things much worse too, Malboros, Serpions and Mistodons. Monsters crawl the Eunorus Plains surrounding Lindblum and I do not know where they have all come from. All I can tell is they arrived in the wake of this mist.

"Lady Hilda," Erin says again, this time closer, fiercer and I know she wants to say we should go back, should not be out here at all. She is so loyal to Cid. If Cid were as loyal as her I never would have turned him into a bug to begin with all that time ago. He is better now, but I do not forget. Now he is protective, lest I be taken by madmen again, held against my will and maybe not so lucky as to be simply bored to death in their company with their hopeless narcissism.

We must all take risks these days and I can not sit in Lindblum Grand Castle and darn holes in clothes while others prepare to die. I am a red mage and I know what I am doing. At least I hope I do. Because if I die without making Eiko clean every privy in the castle from the top to the bottom for worrying me so much, I will never find peace.

"Just a little longer," I whisper because we've seen the many monsters, noted where they're congregated the most, taken a rough count, but I have yet to find the driving force behind these things. Monsters do not just migrate from their natural homes of forests and rivers and mountains to surround one city already in danger on a whim. Something is not right here and we must figure out why this is happening. It does not make sense, any sense. Something is wrong here, but I'm not sure what the cause is.

And then I hear the sound from behind, distorted in this irksome mist, but there all the same, and I know that I've found the thing I seek as the sword swings from behind to bite into my flesh, worse than fangs and poison, razor-edged and strikingly cold.

_Fabool IX:_  
Wearily Hilda troops through Dragon's Gate with Erin and three red mages. They look tired; they look like the dead walking. I glare at my head airship pilot and advisor as I grab my wife and pull her into my arms because she looks paler than pale, bloodless and ghostly, a specter of my love and it makes my heart lodge itself in my throat so that I can't speak, only hold her tight and breathe in the scent of her lily perfume, faint and reassuring. She's so stupid, so stupid and brainless and wasted courage and all the things I tell my soldiers not to be because they'll get themselves killed, but she's not stupid, she's just stubborn and she just has to do the right things even when I tell her not to because if she dies, what will I do? If Hilda dies what will I do? That's a reality that seems impossible, yet is so close to being true that it frightens me and I show my fear through anger, always have, can't help such, can't cower, have to hit something instead.

"Hilda! Hilda! What were you thinking?" I demand and I'm shaking her a little now that I'm over simply having her back in my arms. She looks at me and it's that look of hers that peels away my skin and reveals the fragile organs within; it's that look of hers that makes me want to sit in a corner as punishment for causing it until she smiles at me again with those beautiful eyes I love to drown in. I can't let this go though because it was reckless and she'll do it again because she doesn't listen to me when I give her orders. Has there ever been a more disobedient wife? I do not know, but I doubt so.

Hilda doesn't speak, but twines her fingers in my clothes, her eyes rolling into the back of her head in a horrifying way, like a child's doll. She falls and I quickly tighten my grip on her unconscious form, wrapping an arm around her waist that slowly becomes soaked in blood. My heart leaps from my throat as I shout for healers and carry Hilda to the elevator. Erin steps in with me as I sharply pull the lever that sends the contraption flying upwards, the three red mages staying behind to reseal Dragon's Gate and tend each other's wounds.

There is silence and my pilot fidgets, uncomfortable as I give her an unwavering gaze of knitted brow and eyes that would strangle if they only could. Erin scratches her head awkwardly and tells me softly, "I didn't see him okay. I didn't see him till he had his sword in her back and the monsters attacked."

It's an excuse. I know Erin doesn't mean to give me an excuse, just to explain how this could happen, but still. It's an excuse. "What were you even doing out there in the first place?" I rage and my hands tighten convulsively. It is good that we are alone and there is nothing to throw unless I were to throw Hilda, because I feel I might do a very un-regent thing, a very un-adult thing, and throw a fit. Blood is soaking my clothes and puddling dimly on the floor of the elevator as it moves up.

Erin presses her hands into her face, as if to make everything clearer. Or make it go away, I'm not sure. "You know Hilda! She never listens! And well, she was right damn it, okay?!" She shouts, adding as a hasty after thought of, "Sire."

"It's not okay!" I find myself yelling back; I'm angry, she's angry and the elevator is feeling far too small and cramped right now. "It's not okay because you all could have died and you acted like stupid idiots and what would I do if you were all dead?! People don't exactly come running to fill job positions around here! You **know** how I hate having to train new people and for the curse of Ramuh, Erin, you could have taken a **damn** airship!"

My pilot pauses and watches me breathing harshly, getting my second wind to continue on. "Feel better?" She asks and I nod slightly, finding my stress a little relieved. "Good," she tells me, "because an airship Cid? It's a friggin' world of **white** out there! How th' hell are we supposed to see anything from an **airship**?! Use your head, you're the Regent!"

I stop the elevator and get off, holding Hilda possessively as I head towards the two leveled room that is our living space in this large castle. "Screw you Erin!" I shout, marching angrily off, and it's so un-me that she stops and gaps because as far as she knows I have never told someone to screw their self before. In fact, I haven't, but the situation seems to call for it.

"Where's the chivalry?" Erin yells and runs to catch up. She opens the door for me and I look up at the daunting stairs that lead to the second level of the room where our bed is. I admit I'm a little out of shape, maybe a tiny portion too old for this sort of thing, but I carry Hilda up the stairs anyways. Placing her on the bed, I stare at my shirt which was dry and white, but is not anymore and will probably never be again.

Looking at her sleeping face, not pained, blissfully unaware of her blood loss, I calm down and say, "Alright, what happened?"

_Red mage:_  
There's pain and there are memories dancing in my head, horror and deep aching waltzing together across the floor of my mind. I try to think and my head becomes dense in resistance as I struggle to the waking world and breathe life. I sit up and immediately shriek because my back is on fire straight through to my stomach. It hurts so much that I'm surprised I don't die of it.

What an awful thought! Die of pain? I won't die! Not here, not, not—I don't know what, but not here! I force myself back up and open my eyes wide, assaulted by the sight of my room. The colors sear, far too loud; was it always this gaudy?

My head spins and someone's trying to push me back down. My mind seizes in fear, still trapped in the awful memories that are not distant enough for my peace. "**Fir**—!" I begin a spell, but quickly stop upon recognizing a healer, though not one I know personally.

"Lady Hilda, please lie down," the healer tells me as I shake her off and place my feet on the floor, cold despite its carpet covering. As soon as I stand I know this was not a wise decision, wildly flailing for support. My hands grab the healer and tug on her clothes, partially choking her. She tries to move me back onto my bed and I shake her slightly, a motion that affects me more than it does her.

"Lady Hilda, please!" She says in the commanding voice of healers as I stumble across the room to the dresser. I feel wet, why do I feel wet? Dazedly I realize I'm bleeding again, blood slowly, yet consistently pumping from bandages wrapped around my torso, staining one of my white night gowns someone's changed me into, making it sheer and stick to my body. I watch, almost in fascination, as my life's essence spills through a hole somewhere around my navel.

Dragging my attention away from the mundane point of focus, I attempt to find the stairs in the swirling mass of colors and furniture blurring around me. I think the one with the hazy streak of red is it. The carpet is a nice red, red like blood, like innards, no, no, no, like roses, yes; I chose it because it was like roses, not the liquid seeping down my legs to leave footprints in my wake as I stagger forward.

The healer grabs me and I shriek again because it **hurts** and I might just pass out. No, I won't pass out. I **won't**. Someone told me about mind over…over…I can't remember, life or some such once. If one puts their mind to something, they can overcome anything, endure any pain necessary. Strength of will. I have plenty of will; I'm a very stubborn woman. Yes, just be stubborn Hilda, stubborn.

"Let go of mrmph—" I begin, meaning to say "me", but finding myself gagging as my stomach weakly attempts to heave instead. One foot forward, then the next, I can do this. I pull out of the healer's grip, light out of fear from my cry, and attempt words once more. "I am going down those stairs to the throne room and—urghmph—you can either stay here or—amhn—help me!" I wish I didn't sound so breathless and on the verge of consciousness.

I think the healer makes a disgusted noise—I'm not quite sure—but she takes my hand and leads me nonetheless, a human cane. Down the stairs, one, two, three, why do we have so many stairs? It's ridiculous. Along the twisting halls to the elevator which jars my bones as it rumbles down the two levels to the throne room. From there it's a short trip that seems an eternity of irritating blood loss and I feel like I might vomit, though I'm not sure if sand scorpions or breakfast would come up if I indulged.

Cid is there, I think, a mass of autumn red, just like our carpet, moving back and forth. The motion is hard to follow, if only because my eyes hurt from straining to make sense of things. Slowly he comes into focus, silly mustache, silver hair, large ears, well-clothed—not through any incentive of his own that is certain—figure, stopping, staring, mouth moving soundlessly until he wraps his arms around my gently, so gently that I find myself falling back into slumber.

"Go to bed," he orders, but there's no conviction in that voice. Dimly I shake my head and try to quell the pounding this causes, a hammer striking an anvil in my skull. "Have to tell you," I mutter and he gives a frustrated noise only I can bring forth from him even as he kisses my forehead. "I know my darling," he tells me, "I know that you were attacked by an unknown man who the monsters followed and that the five of you barely managed to escape. Erin told me."

I remember the murky plains and I know my companions did not witness the most important part of my encounter with the man who leads the monsters. This is because he whispered it in my ear as he ran me through in a voice that was both sadistically hungry and fearfully childish. "He talked to me," I say and Cid freezes. "He what?" My husband demands and he sounds angry, his voice a rumble in his chest.

"He talked to me. 'Fight on little woman, despair, beg him when he comes to kill you. He's not desperate enough yet. Taunt him with your insufferable life'," I say, hearing that soft laughter, cold and choking, once more as I look up at my sugar cup, my other half, watching him slowly take the message in. He stares back at me and both our eyes reflect the same emotion: fear.

"'He'? Does he mean Zidane?" Cid murmurs thoughtfully. "I believe it may be so," I reply and we both understand that there is far more to Zidane's coming attack than we ever thought, all somehow connected to this man.

"Do you think someone could find him again?" My husband mutters and I think back to the mist. It was not I who found him, but he who found me. "No. Not unless he wants to be and I'm not sure he does," I answer, my reasoning lost on Cid.

"Then why did he attack you?" He questions, not understanding. "To declare war," I enlighten him and for a long time we stand in silence.

_Husband and Wife:_  
Our dear city must be protected. This unknown man is a mystery and Zidane's attack leaves little room for investigation. We will stand together until the end, there is not much more that we can do than be strong. Yet still…when did the world drown in this mist of insanity?

* * *

Mysterious man, impending attack. Cid and Hilda find the future an uncertain cloud of desperation. If there is a safe path through the coming chaos, it is not one they have deciphered. They are not the only ones feeling the world encroach. Next: _Melting On The Tongue--Rejection of Quina._


End file.
